Going Light With Backpack Or Burro

Price, $2.95

About Going Light

This is a backpack manual, with notes on the care, feeding,
and persuading of burros. Our purpose in Going Light is to
let people know how they may enjoy wilderness trails (chiefly
those of the West) without superfluous equipment and expense.

We were stirred to write the book by a conversation we once
had with Newton B. Drury, then Director of the National
Park Service. We thought it sad that so few of those who go
into the national parks and forests ever get away from roads
and on to trails, and that few of those few are equipped to go
as happily as they might.

Mr. Drury thought we knew ^quite a bit about the art of
going light and should write it down. We Kive/ : And we
hope it will make friends for the sky-land trails and thereby
help protect the serene country those trails wind through.

and about staying light

Going Light's recurring revisions keep reasonably up-to-
date on the principles but not the details of what is latest in food
and equipment. The Sierra Club publishes a knapsack equip-
ment leaflet and a knapsack cookbook, Food for Knapsacken.
The equipment leaflet discusses materials and sources of supply
the club's outing committee thinks most helpful. The cook-
book does the same for the knapsack menu. Address: Mills
Tower, San Francisco 94104.

' : In chapters on camping, traveling techniques, food and cooking, equip-
ment, map and compass, mountain medicine, women, children, burro trips,
especially for men plus an appendix of lists of food, equipment and books.

Going Lig it- with backpack or burro

edited by DAVID R. I

with contributions by

Lewis F. Clark, Elizabeth Cowles,

Alex Hildebrand, Joel H. Hildebrand,
Milton Hildebrand, Mildred Jentsch Bennett,
Louise H. Klein, H. Stewart Kimball (M.D.)

Richard M. Leonard, Bestor Robinson

illustrated by MILTON HILDEBRAND

SIERRA CLUB
SAN FRANCISCO

PUBLISHED ON THE YNES MEXIA PUBLICATIONS FUND

The Sierra Club, founded in 1892 by John Muir, invites

participation in its program a program that needs continuing and

wide support to preserve the nation's scenic resources,

including wilderness, wildlife, forests, and streams.

Address: 1050 Mills Tower, San Francisco, Calif. 94104

235 Massachusetts Ave., N.E., Washington, B.C. 20002

15 E. 53 St, New York, N.Y. 10022

6 Langley Street, London, W.C. 2, England

Tenth printing, 1968

Copyright 1951 by the Sierra Club

Designed by David Brower

Manufactured in the United States of America

by the Vail-Ballou Press, Inc., Binghamton, N.Y.

to those who walk
the sky-land trails

Foreword

SO YOU ARE going to the mountains? Here is a
book on how to plan to hit the trail. It will serve you well
as a guide to full enjoyment of America's rich heritage of
high country.

Going Light has been written by backpackers seasoned
on the trails of mountain parks and forests. City dwellers
who have been timid about going into the back country
beyond the roads, will be encouraged by those who have
put their experience into this book, including their dis-
covery of the joys of traveling light.

The contributors, the editor, and the Sierra Club deserve
our gratitude for their design of Going Light. You travel-
ers who have reached the foothills and just discovered the
trails leading to the mountains will find this book a com-
panion that will lighten your pack as you travel to timber-
line and beyond. Officials charged with the responsibilities
of protecting your trail country will welcome Going Light
as an aid in helping visitors to live right in the mountains.

NEWTON B. DRURY
Washington, D.C.
January 8, 1951

[vii]

Preface

IT WAS IN Joel Hildebrand's garden in Berke-
ley that this book was born. A group of us had gathered
on a fogless spring evening for a friendly discussion of
this and that. Newton Drury, then Director of the National
Park Service, was what you might consider the guest of
honor, and it was only natural that in the course of the
evening there should be several suggestions on how to
run the national parks.

The tide of talk flowed naturally to Yosemite as it
always does when Californians who like mountains get
together and before it ebbed we had thought long and
hard about the fatal beauty of Yosemite, of the over-
crowding that resulted from that beauty, of what could
be done there and in other parks equally popular to pro-
tect the beauty from the throngs it attracted. A garden will
withstand an occasional errant footprint but not a million,
and Yosemite was periodically taking a beating from the
crowds that might number 30,000 on a Fourth of July
week end and could not be contained on the roads, the
roadsides, the near-by trails, in the hotels, or in the camp-
grounds. The park rangers could no longer range; they
had to be called in to police traffic. Others who served the
public saw so much public they tired of it a little. Visitors
who came to enjoy urban pleasures in a new environment
found the lines of like visitors too long, and visitors who
came just to see Yosemite for itself saw more of other
visitors than of Yosemite.

[ix]

x PREFACE

The usual enterprising solution, to expand to meet the
demand, would hardly work here; the size of Yosemite
Valley was pretty well predetermined. It would hardly
help to improve the road so that people could drive in and
out the same day, and thus circulate through, rather than
be precipitated in, the valley. But something would some
day have to be done, that we were agreed; something rela-
tively drastic, against the day when the population of the
West became denser than now and its recreational needs
greater.

None of those discussing these things was worried for
himself. We knew where in Yosemite we could go, even on
a Fourth of July week end, in order not to have our toes
stepped on. It was simply a matter of arithmetic. The
crowd diminished according to the square of the distance
from the highway and according to the cube of the eleva-
tion above it. Thus, no matter what the crowd, the rock
climbers had no problem at all. The Cathedral Spires
were all theirs. Those who preferred their off-highway
strolls a little less perpendicular could do very well on any
of the trails except those nearest the hotels and perhaps
the first two miles of the trail to Vernal and Nevada falls.
We knew for sure that no matter what the valley-floor
crowd, it was possible to travel all day on almost any of
the trails in the Yosemite High Sierra without meeting
more than a few people.

It was clear that for at least the crowded summer season
the real Yosemite the serene mood of the parkland
would have to be sought well beyond the Sierra roads and
highways. It also became clear that a service could be
rendered to those who really wanted to experience that
mood if we could compile a book that would explain how
simply, how inexpensively, and how enjoyably they might
get into the back country whether in Yosemite or in the

PREFACE xl

other western national parks, national forests, national
monuments, state parks, or even into whatever private
lands might still be primitive enough to provide the chal-
lenge of the wilderness.

We resolved, then, to put this little book together. We
were not anxious to overadvertise how satisfying the
back country can be; for then it, too, might suffer the fate
of summertime Yosemite. But we are not too troubled. We
are well aware how unlikely it is that any mere book
would lure in excessive numbers from the throttle the
housebound citizen to whom a night in the open, on rather
uncompromising ground, under the stars or under the
clouds, is repulsive. But we hope that somehow these
pages will stimulate and encourage those who feel they
should like to be up there up where the trails are. And
we're anxious not only that they be encouraged to seek,
but also that they be persuaded to protect to the utmost,
the wild places they have sought and lived with and
loved.

DAVID R. BROWER
Berkeley, California
February 15, 1951

More than a decade later (and six printings later, each
helped by suggestions from readers), the book is still at
it. The need seems even greater in these days of ubiquitous
attempts to move the wilderness experience to the roadside.
True wilderness is where you keep it, and real wilderness
experience cannot be a sedentary one; you have to seek it
out not seated, but afoot. That, at least, is how the Sierra
Club feels about it.

D. R. B.
Berkeley, August 1, 1962

Acknowledgments

IT is ALWAYS a little hard, when a book such
as this has been compiled, to identify accurately the work
of each of the contributors. At one time or another, each
has looked over the drafts of the others and has added
his own bit to them. It is easy, however, and a pleasant
duty, to say who has done the main work on the chapters
and who is therefore responsible for the good that is in
them: Lewis F. Clark, part of chapter 3; Elizabeth
Cowles, chapter 10; Alex Hildebrand, chapter 5; Joel
Hildebrand, chapters 1 and 3; Milton Hildebrand, chap-
ters 3, 12, 13; Mildred Jentsch, the special food list;
Louise EL Klein, chapters 9 and 11; H. Stewart Kim-
ball, M.D., chapter 8; Richard M. Leonard, chapters 4
and 7; Bestor Robinson, chapter 6.

To these people, then, the credit and special credit to
the Hildebrands for skillful revising and counsel. To the
editor the responsibility for the final judgments passed
after the others had had their last look at the manuscript
and for not subduing his predilections (if any should
happen to have survived so many scrutinies).

Grateful acknowledgment is also due many friends for
their encouragement, the University of California Press
for permission to borrow parts of the Manual of Ski
Mountaineering, and to each reader who helps make fu-
ture editions more complete.

D. R. B.

MO

Contents

1. Open House on the Trail 1

2. About Camping 5

Who can go, when to go, where to go

3. Wilderness Traveling II

Organization, solo travel, schedule, pace, how to
walk, clothing, shoes, food and water, off-trail
travel, route selection, the detailed route, talus and
scree, snow, fording streams, about being lost

4. Camping Technique 26

Choice of campsite, making a camp, laying over,
breaking camp

5. Food and Cooking 35

Quantity, considerations governing choice of food,
repacking, cooking equipment, building fires,
breakfast, lunch, dinner, dishwashing

6. Equipment 46

Sleeping bags, mattress, raingear, notes on pitch-
ing tents, clothing, the pack, miscellany

7. Map and Compass 67

Orientation, compass

8. Mountain Medicine 74

Blisters, sunburn, snow blindness, lacerations, frac-
tures and dislocations, injuries to joints, shock,
heat stroke and exhaustion, snake bites, mountain
sickness, swimming, water sterilization

9. Women 88

[xiii]

riv CONTENTS

10. Especially for Men 93

11. Children 101

12. Burro Trips 108

Personnel and stock, food and equipment, itinerary,
daily routine

13. Burro Management H8

Finding them in the morning, catching them, ty-
ing them up, grooming, saddling, packing, on the
trail, fording streams, the noon halt, mud, snow,
and rocks, stubbornness, unpacking, at night,
horses and mules

14. Wilderness Prospect 142

Appendix *~

Food lists, equipment list

Bibliography 150

1. Open House on the Trail

The outer world, from which we cower into our
houses, seemed after all a gentle, habitable
place; and night after night a man's bed, it
seemed, was laid and waiting for him in fields,
where God keeps an open house. I thought I had
rediscovered one of those truths which are re-
vealed to savages and hid from political econo-
mists : at the least, I had discovered a new pleas-
ure for myself.

Travels with a Donkey R. L. Stevenson

THIS BOOK is written for a special sort of per-
son, one not completely civilized, a throwback to an early
age when man lived close to nature his enemy if he were
ignorant or slothful, his friend if he were observant, in-
genious, self-reliant, and tough. Those who retain an
atavistic residue like to give up the luxuries of civilization
from time to time and to go on a sort of spree, during
which they deliberately substitute legs for wheels, muscles
for motors, pine-needle beds for spring mattresses, moon
and stars for neon lights, singing birds for ringing tele-

2 OPEN HOUSE ON THE TRAIL

phones, campfires for radiators, and glowing embers for
a TV screen. There are people, of course, who cannot com-
prehend any such voluntary surrender of civilized com-
forts; people who see a mountain chiefly as an obstacle
to a highway, or a desert as worthless real estate; people
who buy their fun instead of making it.

You are not that sort of person or you wouldn't have
opened this book; but if you are and have opened it by
mistake, put it down at once, for you will not enjoy it,
unless, perhaps, to laugh at us queer ones who find hiking
a pleasure. This is compiled for people who have the in-
stinct to hit the trail, but have either never known how
to get beyond the lunch-box stage, or, having ventured
farther, would like to learn more. There is much to learn.

A basic fact of life that especially impresses itself upon
the hiker is that you pay in one way or another for every-
thing you get. If the backpacker takes along an air mat-
tress in order to be more comfortable at night, it makes
him uncomfortable all day long as it pulls at his shoulders.
And, if, instead, he decides to let a burro carry this and
other comforts, the animal brings along his own peculiar
problems. If you want good fishing, you may have to go
where there are mosquitoes as well as fish. If you want to
camp amid the inspiring scenery of timberline, your nights
will be cold. This is a fine lesson to learn and willingly
accept, for these are only the just prices that have to be
paid for the good things of life prices that have not been
inflated by greed.

It helps to realize that there are several methods of trail
travel, each offering its own particular advantages in re-
turn for its own natural costs. The backpack trip is the
cheapest in money and the freest as to movement and
campsites. It enables one to take routes that animals can-
not travel. It frees one from the necessity of reserving

OPEN HOUSE ON THE TRAIL 3

animals long in advance. Its disadvantages are, first, that
even the minimum pack becomes heavy on trips longer
than a week or ten days by reason of the irreducible limit
of about two pounds of food per day, unless one has a
hump on which to live. Second, the heavy pack urges one
to hurry along to the next resting point instead of saunter-
ing along the trail and looking about. And, third, you can-
not take your very young family very far on a backpack
trip, and, while waiting for them to grow up, you may
grow sedentary and flabby. It pays, therefore, to learn how
to pack burros. A child of four can ride a burro, and a
child of one and a half can be carried on his dad's back as
described later in this book provided that dad knows how
to pack the duffle on a burro or two. When the family
grows up, mules may be taken instead of burros for faster
travel, fewer animals per party, and less trouble on diffi-
cult trails crossing snowfields and streams. A good burro
is a wise little beast of burden that soon becomes a pet if
properly treated; and a mule is one of the noblest crea-
tions of man (not of God) , intelligent, powerful, and made
for mountain travel.

Every hiker awakens early to some of the rewards of
trail and camp, but the potential rewards are so numerous
that he may overlook others which would increase the rich-
ness of the experience. There are some who appear to go
out only for trout. Trout are not to be despised, whether
on the end of a line or in a frying pan, but some fisher-
men seem to have no other source of enjoyment. Yet the
trail offers much besides a route to a trout stream. The
rocks, the trees, the flowers, the animals and birds, and
the landscape, all invite attention. A person who can see
in the sculpture of the terrain the geologic history of the
region has a great drama unfolded before him; one who
can name the trees and the wildflowers has a pleasure

4 OPEN HOUSE ON THE TRAIL

similar to that of meeting friends; one who becomes for a
time a member of the wildlife community rather than an
intruder can enjoy the sense of belonging in good society.
The photographer has an infinite choice of unhackneyed
material for fine pictures instead of just snapshots. Nor
should we neglect to mention one of the greatest satisfac-
tions of all of being able to concoct an apple pie, or a
special mulligan, or hot nut-date biscuits that elicit such
appreciation as only the combination of good cooking and
trail appetites can arouse.

And, finally, there is no activity that can contribute
more to the development of certain important elements of
character. Parents who take to the trail with their children
are not likely to have serious problems of discipline, be-
cause the lessons of camp and trail are automatic and
reasonable. Good humor, cooperation, control of emotion,
are called forth in child and adult alike by their obvious
value. And an adult whose sense of values has become
distorted by city life gains a truer perspective in the
presence of majestic mountains. Money and social prestige
seem less essential to a person lying in his sleeping bag,
with pleasantly tired muscles, looking up through the trees
at such heavens as are never seen in the neighborhood of
cities. But it is not necessary to take self-improvement too
seriously, for all such moral benefits can be taken merely
as by-products of the delight to be found by hitting the
trail. Let's go!

2. About Camping

THE WILDERNESS AREAS of the national for-
ests, the primitive, back-country regions of the national
parks these are the places where hitting the trail and
camping out are going to he most enticing. To whom does
this wilderness country, this land that must he lived in to
be seen, belong? Not in title, of course; practically all of
it is government-owned, and that means it belongs to
everyone. But whose are these lands to enjoy? Do they
belong just to "the aristocracy of the physically fit," as
has occasionally been said?

To a degree yes. Not to any widely discriminatory de-
gree, however. That millions of citizens have not yet left
their cars to explore the country's wilderness is due chiefly
to a gap in their education. Perhaps they started out with
a certain love of small-boy pioneering in the wilds, but
they were allowed to forget and to lose it, and to grow
up j ust a little afraid of wild places. An army colonel tells
of an experience with an infantry organization composed
almost entirely of men from a large Eastern city. Cer-
tainly they had not been timid in their customary environ-
[5]

6 ABOUT CAMPING

ment, but the first time a field exercise required them to
spend a night out in the woods an amazing number of them
wept. An Air Force officer tells a sadder story of a pilot
who was forced down an easy day's walk from civilization
in the north woods but who, for fear of the unknown of
the wilderness, shot himself in the few hours before
rescuers reached him.

These may be overdramatic examples of the failure to
learn about living in the wilderness. Other, everyday exam-
ples are implicit in what many a man has learned to think
of as proper traveling. A proper traveler, he feels, must
travel far. If he can't afford Europe, then certainly the
least he should aspire to is to do the national parks
probably doing all of them in a single summer. He wheels
them by in rapid succession. So long as his timing allows
him to pass by Old Faithful in eruption, he has seen
Yellowstone. A two-hour valley tour by car does Yosemite.
Yes, he would like to get out of his car to stretch a bit and
revive what the cushions have numbed, but there isn't
time; there are two more parks in this particular state,
and he has to take them in. He travels fast and far never
getting close to the ground or intimate with the terrain.

We want to emphasize here and now, even to the point
of being evangelical in our emphasis, that one gains a
great deal by getting just as far from exhaust fumes and
ringing telephones as his feet will let him; that feet are the
readiest means of access to such sanctuary; and that so
long as one can walk, if only a mile or two a day, it is
possible to use the wilderness as a sanctuary.

You are not too old. The Sierra Club, to choose the
example we know best, has been running wilderness out-
ings into the mountains since 1901, and the age range
of those who have gone on the trips walking all the way
and sleeping on the ground has been from eight to eighty.

WHEN TO GO 7

You are not too young. Some children have started out,
as side loads on a burro, before their first year was done.
Among them were some who liked their indoctrination
so well that they are now doing the same for their own
children and have helped write a book about it this book.

You are not of too frail a sex. Wilderness travel and
pleasure is by no means for the hardy male alone. If you
think so, or if you don't think so but your husband does,
see the chapters on Women and Especially for Men.

Nor are you too poor. If you can make your way to the
roadhead, beyond which the wilderness begins, you can
arrange your trip so conservatively as to get by for less
than it costs to live at home.

No, the wilderness is not for any aristocracy. We believe
instead and for a chapterful of reasons that it is of
high importance to everybody as a sort of safety valve. It
has in it a little of what a window box has for a crowded
apartment, a garden for a home, a park for a city. But it
has more, for these are all on the orderly, manicured side.
Wilderness, given the chance, takes care of itself. We'd
like enough people to know about it, whether or not they
use it often, to make certain that our few remaining wild-
erness areas always have that chance.

When to go

One can camp out in any season, but it is during the
summer when schools are closed and the weather is rela-
tively warm and dry that most family outings are taken.
Further increase in population, in leisure hours, and in
ease of travel may some day require staggering the use
of public camping places unless more recreational areas
are soon added to the public domain ; but today the wilder-
ness still provides plenty of room for travel, and the chief
problem is merely to select the part of summer that is most

8 ABOUT CAMPING

satisfactory. It is well to start by camping when it is easiest
to do so, but no one season is best, and the camper will
find it rewarding to vary the season of his outings.

In the high mountains of the West, June is beautifully
alpine. There may be too much snow at high elevations.
Streams are so high that fording presents real problems
where foot bridges are not provided, and fishing is likely
to be poor. There may even be a late snowstorm late but
light. Nightly freezes are to be expected. Warm clothing
and waterproof footgear will probably be needed.

By July there is less snow, and streams are lower. Days
will be pleasantly warm unless a prolonged series of
thunderstorms should develop, and night temperatures are
milder. Early flowers are well under way.

August is still drier and warmer. Late flowers are at
their peak. Streams and lakes are lower, and fly fishing
should be at its best. This is the most popular month for
camping and packtrain operators, who are booked up well
in advance.

By late September most of the flowers have gone, but
there are more berries. Deciduous greens have changed to
fall colors. The mountains are ready for the first snow of
the coming winter season, and the traveler should not be
surprised if he happens to share it. One of the most im-
portant items of equipment in this, the hunting seascTi, is
a red hat unless one is traveling in a national park.

There is wide variation from region to region. The dry
season is shorter in the Cascades than in the Sierra.

One can camp out on the deserts of the Southwest at
any season; but from November until May, in the regions
receiving heavy snowfall, camping technique and equip-
ment must usually be those of the winter mountaineer.
These are discussed in detail in the Manual of Ski Moun-
taineering.

WHERE TO GO 9

Where to go

A map of the places the wilderness camper can explore
would be a map of the Western States, the Appalachian
Chain, and the north-woods country wherever mountain
and forest wilderness exist, together or separately. Most
of the suitable wilderness country has been set aside as
national parks and forests, or as state parks. Continued
vigilance is required if it is to remain so. There are re-
sources which were not important when these areas were
placed in the public domain but which have since in-
creased in value, and economic development of some
may be thought to be necessary; however, the recreational
value of the lands will also increase with time, and the
question of what will remain for future generations should
be fully considered in determining whether or not such
lands should be started down the one-way road of ex-
ploitation.

Of all the nation's back country, the High Sierra wilder-
ness, embracing Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon
national parks and Toiyabe, Inyo, Sierra, and Sequoia
national forests, is the largest. It is also the most livable.
The infrequency of summer storms in California allows
some desert characteristics to reach even the highest ele-
vations; but the heavy winter snowfall produced by the
few storms that do arrive provides year-around stream-
flow. The Canadian and Arctic-Alpine Life Zones are
charming, well-watered, open, fair-weather sky-lands.

In the Cascades of Oregon and Washington summer
snows are progressively deeper as one travels northward;
glaciers, which are mere vestiges in California, are there
active ice engines transporting the mountains seaward. The
prodigious rain forests, with their gigantic trees and with
dense waterloving undergrowth, await the camper in

10 ABOUT CAMPING

Olympic National Park and elsewhere near the coast where
they have not been destroyed by the logger's saw. The
weather that makes the glaciers and rain forests possible
is much in evidence, and the camper must equip himself
accordingly. Timberline is at about 6,000 feet

The Rocky Mountains provide abundant opportunity
for short trips. Extended outings are somewhat discour-
aged by the numerous roads and mining developments
and by the heavy use of range lands.

The canyons, mesas, and ruins of the Southwest are a
fascinating challenge to the explorer, but there is less need
for going light on desert trips, because most of them do
not go far from highways or automobile trails. It should
be pointed out, however, that the ability to get along with
lightweight, compact equipment adds to the ease and com-
fort of automobile camping.

Wherever one may wish to go, he is confronted with a
difficult choice. Should he see new country, or should he
renew an old acquaintance. The person who never leaves
the road will probably have no hesitation; he is likely to
choose the first. The wilderness traveler, who becomes
intimately acquainted with campsites, vistas, and summits
may find it harder to make a choice. What could be finer
than to spend one's life discovering which plan is more
desirable!

Having discussed the when and where of going light,
we ought to explain how. The short answer to this is:
acquire the technique, the equipment, the company, the
time, the physical conditioning and take off.

The company and the time are up to you. We can only
urge that you approach your chosen companions with en-
thusiasm for the venture and with a good map of possible
itineraries, and that if you don't have the time, you ought
to make it

3 Wilderness Traveling

WILDERNESS TRAVELING is ordinarily accom-
plished by walking, and since all of us know how to walk,
the novice is able to enjoy hiking without previous ex-
perience or schooling. However, there is much more to
wilderness travel than merely picking them up and setting
them down. Mastery of the technique of travel contributes
much toward the efficiency and safety of a camping trip.
Efficiency makes it possible to feel fit instead of finished
at the end of the day. Safety brings confidence for the trips
ahead, and satisfaction over those behind. Let us see what
there is to the technique of wilderness travel.

Organization

When planning a camping trip, it is important that or-
ganization be considered. It is not suggested that a chain
of command be established. Schedule and itinerary will
probably be decided upon by popular vote, and if each
member of the party will care for himself and his equip-

en]

12 WILDERNESS TRAVELING

ment, and will lend a willing hand when there is a job to
be done, no one need be a taskmaster. However, com-
munity equipment and some aspects of the party welfare
may be neglected unless made the responsibility of a
leader. Did anyone find out if there is a snake-bite kit in
the party? Is anyone keeping track of the time so we can
get back to camp before dark? Did anyone make sure the
fire was out before we broke camp? Certainly ! The leader
has done these things.

A very small group of experienced campers need not
designate a leader because each member will uncon-
sciously make it his own responsibility to see that the trip
progresses smoothly and safely. If the party is larger or
less experienced, leadership may be rotated among the
qualified persons, or the responsibility for cooking, pack-
ing, and breaking trail may be divided among specialists.
However, it is usually desirable to recognize a permanent
leader even though he may delegate certain responsi-
bilities.

The leader will see that community equipment is pro-
vided and cared for. He may need to check the personal
equipment of a novice to be sure that it is adequate. Off
trail the leader will usually go first if the terrain is rough,
or if route selection is difficult, or if it is necessary to con-
trol the pace. In camp he makes sure that fires are con-
trolled and that the site is left clean for the next party.
He keeps track of the whereabouts of party members, and
in the event of an accident he takes charge.

It is well for the leader to understand that a definite lift
is experienced by the person who travels first along the
trail, and that there is a corresponding letdown to being
last. The last person may have had trouble with equipment.
If he paused for a drink or to ward off a threatened blister,
it may be very hard for him to catch up. He may be peeved

LEADERSHIP 13

at the main party for going too fast, and at the same time
feel guilty for holding it up. Too often the faster hikers
wait until the rear guard catches up only to strike out
again, refreshed by their pause, the moment the tired
stragglers come into view. Considering the unity, morale,
and pleasure of the party, the leader may urge a slow
hiker to walk near the front of the line, or even to take
the lead. He may suggest with great tact that some of
the hiker's pack be distributed among the stronger mem-
bers of the party. Where the route is clear and safe it is
often desirable for the party to split temporarily into two
or more groups traveling at different speeds in order to
accommodate differences in preference of pace. In this
event it is important that there be a clear understanding
of route and rendezvous point. The leader should pause
soon after the start of a day's travel to make sure that
everyone's equipment is working well; thus he can pre-
vent the cause of much straggling.

If the leader must be considerate, it follows that the
others should consider his feelings as well. The leader has
taken the responsibility for finding a good general route
and a good specific route, for trying to set a good pace,
for keeping a good many necessary details in mind. It is
a sure road to unpopularity for any of those who follow
to take shortcuts, to strike off on little competitive varia-
tions of their own, to walk on his heels, to pass him, or on
the other hand to lag unnecessarily behind. Photography
can make about as many momentary enemies on a trip
as it makes fast friends back home. The man who himself
does not see a good shot becomes impatient with the man
who stops to take it, and the man who stops becomes
fully as irked at the one who forges on.

There is no need to expand upon the application of the
Golden Rule. Suffice it to say that failure to remember the

14 WILDERNESS TRAVELING

rule is less likely to spoil the atmosphere down in civiliza-
tion, with its diverse throngs, than up in the back country,
where the very scarcity of individuals may reveal too
harshly those few rough spots in the personality of each
one rough spots from which the smallness of the group
permits little escape.

Solo travel

Solo travel is seldom advisable or necessary, and should
never be undertaken without the permission of one's party,
and unless others know the route and schedule, and the
equipment which will be carried. This is the most im-
portant rule of mountain travel. A person might claim
the privilege of risking his own life by going off and get-
ting lost, but he has no right to put his companions to the
immense trouble and anxiety of trying to find him. An
accident can happen even to an experienced hiker. A
sprained ankle could incapacitate him, and his life might
depend upon whether his comrades know where to look
for him. If solo travel is justified, the hiker should carry
with him a little food, extra wraps, a flashlight, a map, and
matches. He should avoid off-trail travel if possible.

Schedule

Unless the day's trip is to be short, it is usually best to
start early and to camp early, to permit the selection of
an attractive campsite and have time for fishing, botaniz-
ing, washing, fixing a soft bed, or cooking something
extra special. Moreover, travel in the cool early hours of
the day is by far the least wearing. The itinerary for the
day should be decided upon before setting out in the
morning, and each member of the party should know
the plattt

PACE 15

Pace

It is good to be able to travel far and fast, and a party
of young people often finds pleasure in the ability to do so.
But there are also rewards to more leisurely travel which
should not be overlooked. Go as fast as you can com-
fortably go unless you feel impelled to break records.

The novice often starts the day like a rabbit. He walks
so fast that he gets out of breath and must stop repeatedly
to blow. His halts to pant become more frequent and
longer, and at the end of the day he may even find, to his
chagrin, that some tortoise has arrived ahead of him. The
experienced hiker starts more slowly and finishes strong.
He may stop often to admire the view, or to take pictures,
or to watch an interesting bird, but he travels at a pace
such that he seldom needs to blow when hiking on a trail.
An exception may be a short stop to rest his shoulders
when he has a heavy pack. Even then he seldom removes
his pack but merely sits where it is supported by a rock
or the slope of the hill.

On the upgrade it is the vertical and not the horizontal
distance which counts. This requires that pace be greatly
reduced on steep pitches. One need not breathe much
harder on a climb than on the level. On a trail one should
not cut across switchbacks, partly because it breaks down
the side of the trail, making it vulnerable to water erosion,
but also because the long way around is equivalent to a
lower gear and is more efficient. The principle of steady
travel at a comfortable pace is a very important one which
comes hard to some eager enthusiasts.

How to walk

Seek a rhythmic stride, however fast or slow. Learn to
swing your hips a little to lengthen your stride. People who

16 WILDERNESS TRAVELING

toe out too much lose some of the spring of the foot as
well as the fully effective use of various foot and leg
muscles. Cushion the stride with slightly flexed knees. This
becomes more important on downgrades, and with a pack.
On steep upgrades, plant the feet flat; do not hold the foot
up on the toes for this overworks calf muscles and may
inflame the heel tendon. If the grade is too steep, zigzag,
step a little sideways, or use irregularities of the ground to
support the heel in a comfortable high position.

It has been emphasized that pace must be steady, and
slow enough to obviate frequent rest periods. On steep
ascents a brief pause with each stride, or group of strides,
will enable you to avoid breathlessness. It seems awkward
at first but becomes second nature with practice. On terrain
smooth enough to permit small, equal strides, the pause
can come most effectively just as each foot is planted on
the ground and before the weight is shifted forward;
locking the rear knee rests the leg muscles. Where pos-
sible, avoid a very steep line of travel by making short
zigzags. Thigh muscles have the best leverage when the
knee is not much bent. Where a steep line of travel is neces-
sary, it sometimes is preferable to pause in the middle of
each stride as one foot passes the other. On uneven terrain,
such as on talus, it is often easier to maintain balance
if several quick steps are taken between pauses on rocks
suitable to stand on.

Clothing

The body must get rid of the extra heat generated by
heavy exercise. There is no more sense in making it dif-
ficult than there would be in hindering the passage of air
through the radiator of an automobile with a hot engine.
It is, therefore, a mistake to wear a heavy woolen shirt or
a jacket which is not actually needed for warmth. A hiker

CLOTHING 17

will perspire amply for health even though his body re-
mains dry because of low air humidity, and excessive
sweating only depletes the body's salt and water stores.

Peel off layers as the sun climbs higher, but avoid an-
other danger. A man with a well-tanned body may hike
stripped to the waist, or even in shorts, if there is no brush
to scratch his legs, but do not be fooled by a back-yard
tan. One should be very cautious till he learns what his
body can take at high altitudes where the burning ultra-
violet radiation is much stronger than at the seashore.
Tanning and burning are different processes; the former
builds new tissues in the skin and takes time with repeated
judicious exposure; the latter, if it goes as far as blister-
ing, destroys tissues and is an actual setback to tanning.
Begin, at least, by wearing a light shirt. A man carrying a
pack cannot afford to burn his shoulders!

Thunderstorms are not infrequent in the afternoons
in the high mountains, and the temperature can change
suddenly from summer to winter. It is wise, therefore, to
have readily available, a sweater or jacket, and a light
poncho, parka, or other weatherproof covering. When one
is traveling with a burro or mule, baggage is roped down
tightly under a pack cloth, and therefore, it is convenient
to carry maps, lunch, first-aid, and photographic equip-
ment in a small rucksack. As the weather turns cooler, put
on wraps before you get chilled.

Shoes

The selection of proper shoes is of the utmost impor-
tance. Chapter 6, on equipment, will discuss advantages
of different types. The footgear should be well broken in
to the feet in advance of the trip. Soften the leather by
light waxing and take some hikes near home. This will
also help to toughen the feet and foot muscles.

18 WILDERNESS TRAVELING

Avoid blisters, for the sake of both yourself and your
companions. A person with a badly blistered foot is in
worse condition for travel than an automobile with a flat
tire; a tire can be changed. A backpack places an extra
load upon the feet; make due allowance till you find what
they can take.

In chapter 8, you will find information about the
treatment of blisters; we emphasize here the following
precautions; keep socks free of wrinkles; lace shoes just
tightly enough to prevent rubbing especially on long
descents; stop at the slightest suspicion of irritation to
investigate, and cover a threatened spot with adhesive;
keep the feet clean and dry. If a stream must be forded,
take off the socks (shoes may be worn if the feet are
tender, or if there is danger of being cut) , and put the
socks back on after the crossing.

Food and water

The blood in your body can nourish the muscles dur-
ing exercise, or it can supply the digestive organs for a
heavy meal, but it cannot do both effectively at the same
time. If you hit the trail promptly after breakfast it is
therefore desirable to take it easy the first half hour till
the stomach is partly emptied. It is good to take a short
siesta after lunch before pushing on. It is a pleasant time
of day to bathe, wash socks, or enjoy the sun and be lazy
for a few minutes.

Another thing to consider is the digestibility of food
in relation to physical exertion. Fat slows digestion and
should be avoided at breakfast or lunch on hard days.
Protein digests faster but remains in the stomach for
some time, which is undesirable before a climb. Carbo-
hydrate digests in the intestine and is the best food to nib-
ble o* the trail or use for fuel before a quick start. A

FOOD AND WATER 19

readily digestible lunch item consists of one of the dry
cereals with milk made from whole milk powder and
water, eaten from the tin cup carried on your belt.

The body does not digest any food well when fatigued.
At the end of a hard day don't sit right down and gorge
yourself. Drink a cup of tea or beef broth, relax for half
an hour, and then tie into some solid food with enhanced
appetite and improved gastric powers.

It is better to nibble often during the active part of
the day than to consume a few large meals. Get into the
"morning-brunch, afternoon-snack" habit. Load up in the
evening and raid the larder again before hitting the sack
if you are still hungry.

Those of you who have learned, on deserts, in jungles,
or in the army what it is like to be thirsty are likely to
have concluded that it is better to carry a canteen of luke-
warm water to the next cool stream than to get into trouble
for lack of a drink. However, water is abundant in most
of the mountains that are attractive enough to have trails,
and therefore seldom needs to be carried. If water is plenti-
ful, drink often. If water is scarce, tank up where you can
and take it slowly, particularly if it is very cold; you will
feel lazy until the water in your stomach reaches body
temperature, but it is worth it. You may have to do most
of your rehydrating in the evening, with lots of soup and
drinks (such as tea and broth) before or during supper,
and with a pot of water, tea, hot jello, or lemonade handy
at campfire. If snow is eaten to stay thirst, it should be
melted in the mouth before it is swallowed. When climb-
ing a mountain, stop several hundred feet below the sum-
mit, heap your cup with snow, place several small dark
rocks on the snow, and place it in the sun, taking care to
remember the spot. On the way down you will have a cup
of water.

20 WILDERNESS TRAVELING

Much salt is lost with perspiration and needs to be re-
placed if one is to feel fit and to avoid headaches or even
sunstroke. Some people add a pinch of salt to each drink
of water. Others prefer to season food heavily. Salt pills
may be desirable in desert mountains.

Off-trail travel

The backpacker enjoys a certain degree of independence
from trails because his equipment is with him and he can
camp almost any place. Even burro packers can in some
places get off the main trails and enjoy the challenges of
picking their own routes and exploring wilder regions.
However, off -trail travel calls for some extra experience,
caution, and foresight.

The most rewarding cross-country trips are often short
excursions or loops taken in forests, along streams, or
through meadows. There is no hurry. Itinerary can be
changed at any time and a return to base made at will.
Even though an excursion from trail or camp is to be
short, equipment must be sufficient to make an overnight
bivouac bearable and safe, if not comfortable. Consider
wraps and extra food.

If the excursion is to be more strenuous or extended,
the leader will be responsible for such community equip-
ment as climbing rope, repair kit, and extra first aid. Flash-
light and matches are musts. A down sleeping bag per
party can be invaluable in case of accident or unexpected
delay. The one time the bag of one of us was used at 14,000
feet, near the summit of the North Palisade, justified the
many times it was carried up mountains on one-day climbs
often to the amusement of others. A sleeping bag can
become the most important item of first-aid equipment.

Most side trips are anchored to a base camp and have
an objective, a certain lake or waterfall, or a mountain

ROUTE SELECTION 21

summit. Be sure that every member of your party will
be up to the projected trip, and be sure that you have
competent leadership. Know what you plan to do, don't
just strike out to undertake a climb for which you may
discover you do not have the strength, equipment, or ex-
perience. The novice need not be afraid to explore and
learn new tricks, but he should go prepared, and not be
too proud or too eager to turn back short of his goal.

Do not underestimate the time your trip will require.
Each hiker must learn to gauge the pace he can handle,
making allowance for current physical conditions. Until
personal experience is acquired, allow one hour per 2%
linear miles and add 1 hour per 1,000 vertical feet when
climbing at moderate altitudes and much more at high
altitudes or with a heavy pack. A full breath at 11,000
feet draws into your lungs only two thirds as much oxy-
gen as at sea level. A leader must learn the strength of
his party and get the knack of judging the difficulty of the
terrain from a distance. Never figure too close it allows
you no margin of safety in case of a thunderstorm or
sprained ankle.

Route selection

The correct route is all-important. Returning from the
summit of Mount Darwin with a mixed party of teen-
agers one of us once met two husky-looking young men
who had been trying to find a way up for a week. Seek the
advice of a man who has made the trip or read about the
route if possible. In any event, the leader will select (or
identify) the route by study of the map and, if it is to be
a climb, particularly by careful inspection of the ground
from a distance. At close range it is too late, for one can-
not see the route for the rocks. The leader will above all
consider the safety of the route. This will concern par-

22 WILDERNESS TRAVELING

ticularly the upper part of the climb. If you hope to do
any real rock work, get some advance practice under the
guidance of experienced friends, or at least consult the
sections on rock climbing and route selection in the Manual
of Ski Mountaineering (see bibliography). The technical
aspects of route selection therein described are beyond
the scope of this book, but above all remember the great-
est danger on most climbs is from falling rock. Even a
small rock dislodged by one climber can be crippling
if it strikes another. Large rocks loosen others and are
extremely dangerous. Let no man climb far below an-
other if there is a remote chance that rocks may be dis-
lodged. Pick your route to avoid chutes full of loose rocks
or master the technique used by experienced climbers
in crossing such places.

If several routes are judged to be safe, it is usually de-
sirable to select the easiest. This is not necessarily the
most direct. Look for relatively smooth open ground and
plan a steady ascent as gradual as possible and free of ups
and downs. Very steep snow banks are dangerous, and
you will get your shoes wet in snow after the sun has
softened the surface, so avoid at least the big patches.
Talus (defined below) may or may not be difficult depend-
ing upon the size of the blocks and their stability. Scree is
fast going down but exasperating going up. Smooth rock
outcrops may be easy if not too steep. Ridges are often
easier and usually safer than gullies; they afford two ways
out of a bad spot; chutes are often blind alleys,

The detailed route

The leader of a cross-country party must really select
two routes, the main route and the detailed route. We have
just discussed the first; it is the major plan of progress.
The second is the problem of crossing the next 100 yards

TALUS AND SCREE 23

along the main route with least effort or delay. Should
he go around those down trees to the right or left? At
what point should he cross that strip of snow? Is there a
deer trail through that thicket? Where is the best place
to ford the stream ahead? To select the detailed route
takes constant attention. The leader must look ahead, not
contemplate his feet. His efforts will be rewarded by a
saving of effort and by the steady progress of his party.

Talus and scree

The jumbled pile of broken boulders which have come
to rest below the bare cliffs on a mountain is called talus.
Higher up the rocks are small, in gravel beds called scree.

It is seldom possible to avoid crossing talus slopes on
mountain climbs. The novice is nearly halted. The expert
seldom slows his pace and often finds talus good fun. Do
not climb up over one table-sized block only to slither
down into a deep hole and start another difficult scramble
up the next boulder. This way your total vertical ascent
may be fifty times the net ascent. With a pack, such up
and down progress is almost prohibitive. Unless the talus
blocks are exceptionally large one can stay on top of the
pile. Step or hop from rock to rock selecting the route
with care far enough ahead to avoid blind alleys. Play a
game with yourself never make a rock shift under your
weight. It takes a careful eye to judge the stability of every
rock, and practice to step on possibly loose chunks so that
they cannot turn. Move smoothly and steadily so that if
a rock should tip under you, you will be away to the next
rock and will not be thrown off balance. Use your hands
for balance and to steady yourself against a rock in pass-
ing, but let your legs do the work.

Scree is almost impossible on the way up but may save
time and offer some fun coming down. Run down if you

24 WILDERNESS TRAVELING

wish but not at top speed and not with big strides. Keep
your legs under you as the skier does, and for the same
reason to help you recover from unexpected rough spots.
Do not step on sand or dirt which covers smooth rocks.
There is no more certain way to take a spill! A zigzag
descent is easier on the legs and safer if you trip you
will not land on your head so far down the mountainside.
Take short steps on all rough or loose ground. If you wear
gloves when running down scree you may avoid abrading
a hand when you use one to make a quick recovery from
slipping on a rock concealed by sand.

Snow

Innocent-looking summer snow slopes may be very
dangerous. In descending a steep snowbank, one can
glissade or slide with the upper foot half a length in ad-
vance of the lower, and balancing with the arms. By as-
suming the sideslipping position of the skier and edging
the shoes one can go diagonally and thus control the run.
It is important that there be an outrun so that there is no
danger of hitting rocks should one fall or lose control.

The rocks at the edge of a snow bank often melt the
snow below the surface. One should therefore step onto
a snow bank with caution to avoid falling through the
crust and possibly wrenching a leg.

Fording streams

If a stream must be crossed, look for a fallen log or a
series of steppingstones ; if you have a pack, jumping
from one slippery rock to another can be dangerous, so
don't be afraid to wade with your socks off, but if the
bottom is rough, put your shoes on to protect against
cuts or bruises of the feet. It takes very tough feet to con-
tinue the march in wet socks even for a moderate distance.

ABOUT BEING LOST 25

If it is necessary to cross a swift stream, carry a pack
for weight and select a stout pole to use as the third leg
of a tripod on the upstream side. It will increase your
stability enormously. If your pack has a waiststrap, un-
tie it, so as to be able to jettison the pack if you should
lose your footing.

About being lost

If a person finds that he is lost, he must above all not
become panic-stricken but should sit down and take stock,
and, ordinarily, stay right where he is till found. If he
is likely to have to stay out all night, he should gather a
good supply of firewood for warmth and as a beacon to
searchers. In open country a flashlight can be seen for
miles at night.

There is little excuse for getting lost unless snow or
fog make visibility poor. On trails through forested coun-
try, blazed trees and the wear of feet and hoofs have
made the way plain. It is more difficult to keep oriented
off-trail in forested country. Go to high ground for a view
of the country if necessary. In open terrain one avoids
getting lost by keeping himself constantly posted regard-
ing his whereabouts and by tracing his progress on a good
map. In stony country the trail, if any, is marked by
"ducks," which are two or more stones piled on top of
each other in a way that nature could hardly duplicate.
But some of us have learned to be skeptical about ducks
we have found off trails on supposed knapsack routes.
Few people consider that when they make a ducked trail
they are, in effect, saying to diose who will follow, "I have
scouted this route to the end and know it to be a better
route than you could pick. There are good reasons for
marking this trail and I will mark it all the way."

4. Camping Technique

SUPPOSE THAT, by following all the prescribed
hints and official doctrine, you have been having a good
day on the trail. When should you end it?

First, you should stop before you or any other mem-
bers of the party become too tired. Of course, if you have
all eet out to cover as much ground as physically possible
between sunrise and sunset which is good, satisfying
fun when you are young, and a splendid topic of conversa-
tion when you have grown too old to do it any more
you should not heed this advice. Being rested is by no
means the only state of enjoyment in the mountains, for
surely the harder you pound your feet, the pleasanter will
be the stop when it comes.

More important than avoiding a reasonable amount of
fatigue is the need to allow plenty of time to make a good
installation once the campsite has been chosen. With this
in view, the book should say, "Allow two hours of day-
light for making camp, preparing dinner, and getting ready
to bed down." This is the ideal for comfort.
[26]

POINT OF DEPARTURE 27

Some of us, however, don't always like the ideal and the
comfortable. Some of us remember clearly that the finest
days of all on the trail were those on which we disregarded
good judgment and trudged right on past that critical angle
of the sun's journey that says "camp now." We trudged
right on until the sun was down; we watched the shadows
grow longer and the colors grow soft. We were out look-
ing and drinking it in and not puttering over pots on a
smoky fire when the blue got deep enough, just deep
enough, to let the first star come through. We had seen the
blaze on the peaks change to a flush, to a steel gray, to a
vague shadow before we called it a day. What of it? Our
cooking fire still lit; a campfire lit at the same time
brought the trees in for a closer look. Water still boiled,
food still cooked. And if the cup so shaded the food we
were eating that we couldn't see which course was which,
we still knew what the food had looked like on earlier
days, and it still tasted all right. We all worked a little
more purposefully than we did when making early camp.
So we hadn't suffered at all up until then, and we remem-
ber a distinct advantage when it came to selecting bedsites.
It was too dark to see the hummocks and hollows, the rocks
and pine cones. All the sites looked good. And we were
just tired enough to have them feel good, too.

Having now made it clear that the camping technique
we would prescribe is a point of departure and not a long
corridor without escape, we list without further qualifica-
tion the standard procedures for making, using, and break-
ing camp.

Choice of campsite

Requirements of a site, in order of importance, are:
1) Safety. The site should be free of danger from snow
or rock avalanche. Since wind may come up unexpectedly,

28 CAMPING TECHNIQUE

care should be taken to see that any dead trees or branches
overhead are likely to stay there. Camps in desert climates
should avoid the courses of flash floods.

2) Feed. If animals are used, adequate feed and water
must be available reasonably near to camp. See chapter 12.

3) Water. The backpacker himself requires very little.
Some water-purifying method (Halazone tablets; boiling)
should be used unless the stream can reasonably be as-
sumed to be safe. One of the pleasures of the deeper
wilderness is that this can usually be taken for granted
without undue risk.

4) Wood. Backpackers, being free to camp almost any-
where, would do well to avoid heavily used areas, and
will be rewarded by finding firewood more plentiful, and
traces of heavy use less plentiful. It is not difficult for a
knapsacker to add to his pack enough wood for cooking,
thus permitting a camp above timberline. Where ample
wood is available it is nice to have a campfire after sup-
per (Indian-like, we prefer sitting close to a small fire
rather than far from a blaze a wood-conserving prefer-
ence). Resinous woods, especially the pines, make ex-
cellent firewood and are easily handled. Dead wood broken
off a tree is drier and burns better than sticks picked off
the ground. Dry wood can be broken by striking it over a
sharp rock; an ax is seldom required for either gathering
or cutting firewood.

5) Bedsites. For a comfortable night's rest, each in the
party would like a level bedsite, well-drained, and shel-
tered from wind. A soft covering of duff helps. Sand and
meadow are unyielding, although usable; the meadow is
usually damp and cold. On a clear night it helps to have
foliage between yourself and the absolute zero of inter-
stellar space.

MAKING A CAMP 29

6) Warmth and shelter. Canyon bottoms are the pre-
ferred route of most of the cold, hurried air in the region.
Prefer benches with some tree screen, and anticipate the
winds in the camp layout. The weather otherwise being
calm, wind blows up the slope during the day, down at
night Anticipate, too, the course of all temporary streams
should it rain don't have your bedsite in one.

7) Conveniences. If the country abounds In the previ-
ously listed assets of a good campsite, then select from
these the camp that has (a) a large boulder in front of
which you can build your campfire and against which
you can sit, (b) flat rocks for tables and down logs for
seats, (c) a pool deep enough for swimming or bathing.

8) Sine qua non. And though your campsite bestow on
you all these things and have no view, it profiteth you
nothing.

Making a camp

Once a site has been selected (and members of the party
who are off scouting elsewhere have been gathered in) , the
following order of activity is a good one to follow:

1 ) Use or reconstruct an old fireplace rather than make
a new scar.

2) Get a pot of water, place it on your fireplace before
making the finishing touches, and light the fire with what-
ever squaw wood is within reach. You'll need hot water
soon, and it might as well be heating while you are get-
ting things organized.

3) Get the necessary food and utensils hot. Here it helps
the cook's disposition if each person knows what he has
and where he has packed it. Odds and ends from the packs
should not be scattered around.

4) Set up shelter. If tents are pitched, remember the
rubber-band ties (see chapter 6) and the tent will be

30 CAMPING TECHNIQUE

much more likely to weather a storm or someone's falling
on it. If there are guy ropes, hang something white in the
middle of each so that they will not become tripwires after
dark.

5) Prepare the bedsites (this would precede step 4
for tents with floor). Most woodcraft books recommend
a bough bed. This is a holdover from the day when one
less tree didn't make any difference. Today most of our
wilderness is used so much that every consideration must
be given the natural scenery. The cutting or breaking
of boughs opens up just that many avenues of infection to
the tree, and a pile of dead branches or a dead tree is not
going to be very scenic later in the season or in years to
come. The pitch would stick to your sleeping bag, and
besides, in most regions it is against the law to cut green
boughs. There is usually enough duff under a tree (on
the upper side if on a hill) for a good bedsite once the
cones and rocks have been cleared away. If not, some
needles may be borrowed from near-by trees. Yellow pines
and white-bark pines make the best needle beds; lodge-
pole pines make the worst. A small hollow under the hips
adds greatly to comfort. If rocks are lined up around the
bedsite to hold the duff together, it is a good thing to scat-
ter them again when you break camp rather than leave
them there like tombmarkers.

6) If it is dark, or even just cool, by the time dinner is
ready, start the campfire again in a place where there's
already a scar and eat in comfort. The dishwashers will
appreciate it too. Then settle down and really relax around
the campfire while you watch the tongues of flame as have
countless men before you.

7) Before you leave the fire for bed, see that it is out,
and spare yourself the nightmare (real or imaginary) of
discovering that a wind has sprung up in the night to

CAMPING PRECAUTIONS 31

drop glowing embers on your tents and sleeping bags. You
need not drown the fire at this time, simply let it burn
down and separate all its elements. A piece of wood will
not burn for long without moral support from another
piece alongside it.

8) Remember the feelings of those who will follow you
and make your camp more pleasant for yourselves by
concentrating your sanitary facilities in one area, and in
a spot that will not likely be used by other campers for any
other purpose. Then consider the ways of the cat : dig, and
cover everything. If there are many in the party, impro-
vise a slit trench, partly fill it after each use, and close it
when breaking camp.

9) It is assumed that there is an equitable sharing of
duties. This is normally true of small parties, but it some-
times happens that if the group exceeds nine or ten, one
or two individuals may let their community spirit slide.
If dronishness develops, a confidential word from the
leader to the offender will usually snap him into cooperat-
ing. The man who habitually winds up on a remote rock
when dishes are to be washed, or who always manages to
appropriate the light and easy items when packing up, had
best be left at home next time.

10) Camp should be secured the last thing before retir-
ing. In bear country food can sometimes be tied in a tree,
but is usually placed in packs and taken to the bedsites
where the bear must waken someone to get at it. The steps
to take when so awakened will depend upon the situation
and terrain. Bears usually don't like the rattling of pans
or a flashlight beam in the eye. Lightweight camp maraud-
ers (mice, etc.) can usually be discouraged by placing
any tempting morsels in a pot and weighting the lid with
rocks. Deer may take any item which is salty. See that
camp is wind and waterproofed. Shoes left in the open

32 CAMPING TECHNIQUE

should be upside down. Some shoe greases make leather
appetizing to certain rodents.

11) Sleeping is usually automatic enough out in the
open, but the problem of controlling temperature can in-
terfere with its soundness. If you are traveling as light as
possible, you will have a sleeping bag of minimum weight
and on a cold night may have to rely on the additional
insulation of clothing. If you are cold, you should wear
all the clothing you can get on, but it should be perfectly
dry and as loose as possible. If the night becomes too warm,
your temperature may be progressively reduced by get-
ting the head, shoulders, and arms outside of the bag.

Laying over

A layover day is a good time to check and repair equip-
ment and to turn sleeping bags wrong-side out to air and
dry. If camp is to be left for a side trip, fires must be out.
Articles left behind should be weatherproofed, no matter
how clear the sky in the morning.

It is recommended that occasional layover days be
planned simply to take it easy. Find a flat streamside rock.
Sun and doze on it; look at the branches against the sky
and find out what goes on in a quiet pool. If this is too
dull for you, we are sorry. We can only suggest that you
might fall back on a book the kind that doesn't read
too swiftly but sends you off on lazy mental side trips at
least once every paragraph. If you can't find such a book,
you might take along a notebook and write it!

Breaking camp

There is almost nothing quite so gruesome as getting
up while it is still dark, but there is, on the other hand,
almost nothing quite so rewarding once you have managed
to survive the first horrible half hour. Travel in the cool

BREAKING CAMP 33

hours is far less taxing than in the heat. On the Sierra
Club trips for which that great age range was claimed it
is very doubtful if the less rugged members of the party
could finish some of the longer moves if they did not start
out by dawn. There is an abundant supply of some as-yet-
unisolated stimulant in early-morning mountain air. And
sun-up is a beautiful time to be looking through that air
from high places.

Whether or not you choose to start early and coast
through the day, there are a few pointers on cleaning up
and packing up to bear in mind :

1) While breakfast is cooking, any garbage, including
cans, should be burned. Heat removes the protective coat-
ing from the cans and hastens their rusting, simplifies
smashing them, and destroys odors which are tempting
to bears et al. The cans may then be (a) placed in a dis-
posal bag if one exists or (6) far preferable, be carried
away in your own knapsack or kyack back to the road for
later disposal. An empty can is lighter than a full one,
you are in better condition for being in wilderness when
you emptied it, and you can take it with you !

2) The fire should be thoroughly drowned. There must
be no possibility whatsoever of its reviving, and you must
guarantee it. Covering the fire with nonorganic soil, as is
frequently recommended, has two disadvantages: (a) it is
hard to be sure that there is no combustible material mixed
with the soil or that a root system will not carry the fire
to the surface elsewhere; and (b) a dirt-covered fireplace
repels the next traveler, who builds another and multiplies
the scars.

In packing up, each person should develop a standard
procedure so that he can put his load together with a
minimum of lost motion. He should remember what he had
in his pack when camp was made and, giving thanks for
all of it that has been eaten, should pack it again and re-

34 CAMPING TECHNIQUE

member where it is. In most parties, it is a good idea to
Le a lightweight spring scale along to check kads ft
important to morale that the slower hikers be satisfied that
they are not carrying more than their share.

With a last-minute drink of water and a check of the
area to see that nothing is forgotten and everything is at
kast as clean as when the party arrived, the new days
travel is under way.

5, Food and Cooking

THE PROCESS OF TRANSFORMING part of the
load on his back into appetizing meals is one of the knap-
sacker's most pleasurable activities, so much so that failure
to plan and to cook the right amount of the right food in
the right way can ruin a trip. Fortunately there is some
leeway in the interpretation of the word "right." The back-
packer needs no wide knowledge of foods and their prepa-
ration. Several factors work to the advantage of even the
completely novice wilderness cook. First, he exerts him-
self enough and his party does too not to be too de-
manding about what he eats; certainly he will be more
the gourmand than the epicure. Second, few are likely to
complain to the cook, out of fear of being handed the stir-
ring spoon. Third, quite often frequently out of prefer-
ence dinner may not be ready until campfire time, when
it is too dark to see clearly just what is being eaten. All in
all, the novice will get on very well, inventing as he goes,
experimenting to see if peanut-butter soup, for example, is
really fit to eat, and finding out for certain that an acci-

[35]

36 FOOD AND COOKING

dental combination of macaroni, cheese, and chocolate is
not very fit.

There is always the hard way to learn, of course; this
chapter is intended primarily to suggest how the novice
may avoid it. The chapter is written without a woman's
touch and shows it. Nor were any 19th-century wilder-
ness cooks consulted on how to live royally off the country
on wild berries and grouse. Moreover, those who care so
much about cooking that they want to spend most of their
time fussing over elaborate dishes already have so many
culinary predilections that we'd be wasting our time in
trying to add any of ours. This is simply about basic food.

Quantity

Backpacking and burro chasing is work (in the physical
sense only, of course) and work requires calories. There
are two effective sources of calories on a mountain trip
the food one eats and one's personal reserve of fat. On
short trips of a few days even a very large deficiency in
food may not be noticed. The few pounds of body weight
that will be lost are quickly regained upon return to ade-
quate diet. Consequently there will be varied accounts
about how little food some parties have been able to get by
on. If, however, a party wishes to maintain body weight
and avoid physical deterioration, however imperceptible,
a definite minimum amount of food is required. A person
of average size, not out to break records in trail or cross-
country travel in the mountains and not trying to break
records for loafing either will use nearly 3,500 calories
daily, and can obtain this energy from about 2% pounds
per man-day of food provided it has very low water con-
tent and high calorific value. Practically every group will
tend to underfeed itself, however, regardless of how much
food is taken along, and most parties don't eat more than

CHOICE OF FOOD 37

2 pounds per man-day on short trips. This is what usually
happens: If the party puts in several strenuous days, its
members get too tired to eat enough at dinnertime. They
forget to drink enough water during the day and make up
for it with watery and low calorie-value dishes. Unless
they eat two lunches a day (a mid-morning brunch and
the conventional lunch a little past noon), they eat too
little of the rather dry and not too inspiring luncheon
menu. Finally, they dash out of the mountains hungry to
revel in steaks, milk shakes, and fresh fruit. They probably
enjoy themselves, but we maintain that a well-fed party
fares better.

Considerations governing the choice of food

Recognizing that each person will take what he likes if
he can get it, we go on to suggest:

1 ) Food should be easily digestible for parts of the trips
where meals are to be rushed and followed quickly by
exertion.

2) Food should be easy to prepare unless camp cookery
is one of the main objects of the trip.

3 ) Time required for cooking should be short. In moun-
tains remember that higher waters boil cooler. Sea-level
cooking time doubles at 5,000 feet elevation.

4) Foods likely to burn or stick to the pot should be
frowned upon at the grocer's or they will be at camp later
on. In camp the law reads that he who burns the pot also
cleans it.

5) Bulky (i.e., space-consuming) foods should be few;
a bulky pack is awkward for you to handle and tiring for
others to look at.

6) Water should come from the stream, not with the
food.

Suitable foods are listed in the Appendix (p. 144) . Sub-

38 FOOD AND COOKING

stitutions may, of course, be made for the specific items
on the list, but major changes in the total weight called for
in each category might throw the diet out of balance.
Neither poor balance nor a vitamin deficiency would be
serious on a one- or two -day trip, but on a long trip, one
would begin to crave the kinds of food necessary to correct
the diet. See the appendix for food lists.

Repacking

Food should be repacked if it is in containers which are
breakable, heavy, or hard to pack without wasting space.
For most dry foods flour, sugar, dried fruits, and vege-
tables the best container is usually a cloth sack tied at
the top. The sacks can be made of any tightly woven
cloth, but waterproof material is desirable for carrying
items which should be kept free of moisture salt, sugar,
highly desiccated fruits, and powdered milk. Sacks are
light and they can be crammed into every corner of your
pack. If they are not transparent, a variety of colors will
help you identify food when camp is set up.

Cooking equipment

Cooking equipment and the preparation of a fireplace
are discussed in chapter 6.

Building fires

If you are a Boy Scout, you are already skilled at light-
ing a fire in the wind and rain, with no paper, using one
match or fewer. If you are not, here are a few simple
pointers. Small dead branches are easily broken from
trees and are normally drier than wood which is on the
ground. Dry wood of fair size can usually be broken by
striking it over a rock. There are many techniques for
fire building. When it comes to lighting fires without pa-

BREAKFAST 39

per, there are two kinds of people: (1) those who indis-
criminately gather a generous handful of twigs, needles,
and dead leaves and, looking nonchalant about it, hold the
handful diagonally over a lighted match until the twigs
ignite; and (2) craftsmen who carefully lay four or five
small, dry, resinous twigs over one another, hold one match
close under a point of intersection until ignition takes
place, add the still -burning match to the pile, and follow
this deftly and almost swiftly with a few more small twigs,
a fairly large one as a piece de resistance, a pause, a few
more successively larger twigs and a confident finale of
fire-sized wood. We have already implied which method
is more satisfying.

Persons uncertain of their choice of method or of their
skill, or who expect to light many fires in the rain, may
want to supplement matches with paper, a candle, or lighter
fluid. Such artificial aids are certainly very efficient, but
they rob the business of all art and ceremony.

Further points: If small twigs are not available, make
shavings with a knife. If you want a big fire for warmth,
make it a separate fire and keep the cooking fire small.
For a hot cooking fire, use small wood and add more while
the flame is hot; to cook slowly, use larger pieces or coals.
For good results you must tend the fire to keep it steady.

Breakfast

What to have for breakfast? If you thought of it the
night before you probably cooked some dried fruit while
you sat around the fire after dinner. If not, you may want
to cook some in the morning, preferably the faster minced
dried apples or apricots, or you may skip the fruit in favor
of an early start. To prepare dried fruit, add water to the
desired amount of fruit and let it simmer until soft. The
amount of water required will vary, so until you find out

40 FOOD AND COOKING

how much each fruit takes, put in a little more than enough
to cover the fruit, and add more as the fruit swells. You
are less likely to burn the pot if you add no sugar until
you are nearly ready to stop boiling the fruit.

Coffee drinkers usually have pretty definite ideas about
how to prepare their morning beverage. In the absence of
the usual utensils, you can make passable coffee by dump-
ing about one rounded tablespoon of coffee per cup into
boiling water and taking it off the fire as soon as it looks
opaque enough. Soluble coffee is far simpler to make and
lighter to carry.

To make cocoa, put the required amount of cold water
in a pot; add, while cold, enough powdered milk to make
full-strength milk. For a smooth mixture, warm the water
very slightly as the powder is beaten in with a small wire
beater or egg beater. Mix the necessary dry cocoa and
sugar and dump the mixture slowly into the milk when
hot, stirring briskly. Then bring nearly to a boil and
serve. The amount and proportion of cocoa and sugar
varies widely with individual taste. For a starter try a
generous teaspoon of each per cup of milk, and then adjust
to taste when you see what has resulted.

The remainder of your breakfast can be one or more
of the following:

1) Dry cereal (most knapsackers will be partial to the
only concentrated one grape nuts) with milk.

2) Cooked cereal (e.g., oatmeal, corn meal, wheat
hearts). These are all cooked by pouring the cereal slowly
into the correct amount of boiling salted water on the fire,
stirring as you pour and as often as needed to prevent stick-
ing and burning, until it tastes cooked. The quantities re-
quired vary greatly with the cereal, but until you find
out, try % teaspoon of salt, % cup of cereal, and % cup
of water per person, adding more water during cooking

LUNCH 41

if it gets too thick. The thicker it is the harder it will be
to clean the pot. Boil over a slow fire. If you like raisins,
date flakes, or apple nuggets with your cereal, give them
a head start in the boiling water (but check first to see if
others in the party can abide the combination).

3) Hot cakes. If you brought pancake flour you need
merely stir in enough water or milk, a little at a time, to
produce a medium batter. If you are mixing your own,
the mix should include for each man % cup flour, 1 table-
spoon milk powder, 1 teaspoon egg powder (if you have
it), % teaspoon salt, % teaspoon baking powder, and %
tablespoon melted butter or other cooking fat. The flavor
can be varied by substituting whole wheat flour or corn
meal for about % of the flour, or by replacing half the
flour with cooked rice left over from the night before. It
will take nearly a cup of cooked rice to substitute for
y% cup of flour.

For cooking hot cakes, the frying pan or aluminum plate
must be clean, and well greased with butter or other cook-
ing fat. The fire must be kept steady and low, so that the
cakes become golden brown just as they are cooked
through but before they dry out.

For syrup, just boil two parts of sugar or brown sugar
to one of water. If you want to be deluxe, bring along
maple flavoring and use a few drops per batch of syrup.

4) Canadian bacon, ham, spam, etc. These meats can
either be fried over a slow fire or diced and boiled with
the cereal. Canadian bacon is normally better than or-
dinary bacon because the latter contains so much fat that
most of it is usually wasted.

Lunch

It is not often worth while to cook hot food for lunch,
unless it happens to be a very cold day, in which case you

42 FOOD AND COOKING

might want a hot drink cocoa, coffee, soup, tea, or jello.
It it is not cold, but you don't want to take all your liquid
as pure water, you can mix up some milk or make some
synthetic lemonade. You can mix up lemon or orange
powder such as that supplied in Army C, K, and 5-in-l
rations, or dissolve several pinches of citric acid in a cup
of cold water. Add sugar to taste and a crushed vitamin C
tablet if desired.

The rest of the meal can consist of cold cereal, pilot
bread, pumpernickel or hard crackers with butter, peanut
butter or jam; cheese; salami or other luncheon meats;
salted nuts, dried fruit, candy, cookies, etc. Fresh-caught
mountain trout may be freely substituted if available.

Dinner

For the liquid in it and for its ease of digestion after
a hard day, soup makes an excellent first course for din-
ner provided that it precedes the main meal long enough
not to interfere with eating a full quota of dinnertime
calories. To give the soup body it should have ingredients
such as one or more of the following: powdered milk, pea
flour, soy bean flour, white flour, precooked, dried, mashed
potato, or a commercial dried soup stock. Powdered milk
dissolves best in lukewarm water, whereas any kind of
flour can best be dissolved by first adding water slowly to
the flour until a thin batter is obtained and then adding
the batter to the soup. Vary the amount of flour to suit your
taste, but you can try a rounded tablespoonful per cup of
soup. To give the soup flavor it is desirable to include,
among other things, some of the following: tomato paste
(a 6 oz. can for six to twelve servings), bouillon paste or
cubes, dried onion, garlic powder, chili powder, onion
powder or salt, celery salt, butter, bacon fat, salt, etc. Most
people are surprised to find that they like peanut-butter

DINNER 43

soup; this Is made by stirring water slowly into peanut but-
ter to produce a thin cream which is added to milk and
flavored with salt and preferably also a little onion. If a
soup has body and an adequately strong flavor, you can
add anything else that strikes your fancy.

Unless you wish to fry some trout, ham, Canadian ba-
con, or precooked diced potatoes, you will find it simplest
and quite satisfactory to cook only one dish for the main
course of your dinner. If you have been able to purchase
suitable dried vegetables, however, you may wish to cook
them separately.

Macaroni, spaghetti, and noodles are cooked by boil-
ing ten or fifteen minutes in salted water. You can tell
by taste when they are done. Before serving, you should
pour off most of the excess water and stir in a suitable
tasty addition a liberal amount of grated cheese (about
a cupful of mild yellow cheese for four to six servings) and
some tomato paste, or dried chipped beef and some onion-
flavored cream sauce. The chipped beef may be salty
enough to take care of the paste and water too. For a cup
of cream sauce start with two tablespoons of flour, add
milk slowly until a thin batter is formed, then add the
rest of the cup of milk, and butter, bacon grease, onion salt,
egg powder, or other flavoring; cook slowly while stirring
until thickened, and add to the macaroni.

Rice can be cooked and flavored the same way as spa-
ghetti. It can be cooked quickly if the commercially avail-
able precooked rice is used. Otherwise, it takes 30 to 60
minutes to cook, depending on the altitude, and it takes
more water and requires more attention to prevent burn-
ing. The time required to cook the starch in the rice can
be reduced by heating dry rice to 250 to 300 F. before
adding water. This can either be done in your oven at
home before the trip, or in a dry pot on your grate (be

44 FOOD AND COOKING

careful not to burn it) . It will still be necessary, however,
either to boil it for some time, or to presoak it in warm
water in order to get the kernels soft.

The above starches, particularly rice, are also good eaten
with, or mixed with fish. Rice is good with butter, sugar,
and cinnamon.

Dried vegetables vary too much to discuss in generali-
ties. Most of them should merely be boiled in salted water
an adequate length of time. For many of them, however,
no length of time seems adequate. Try them out at home
ahead of time, remembering that cooking time increases
and willingness to spend it decreases with the altitude.
Precooked, diced, or shredded vegetables are likely to cook
best. Dried, precooked, powdered or shredded potatoes are
easy and quick to prepare and serve with butter, salt, and
milk.

If you want your meat separate, you can fry the Ca-
nadian bacon, spam, or corned beef, etc., or stir dried
chipped beef into a cream sauce, such as described for
macaroni. To fry trout you must grease the plate or frying
pan well with butter or bacon fat.

For dessert one can have stewed fruit, candy, cookies,
jello (preferably with cooked fruit added), or a prefabri-
cated pudding the kind you simply add hot water to.

Dishwashing

The chief disadvantage of cooking is the resulting array
of dirty pots, spoons, and cups which someone (other than
the cook) must clean. As soon as a pot is emptied, rinse
it out, fill it with water, and put it back on the fire. Do
the same with the second pot, and the dish water will be
ready when the meal is over. A small amount of detergent
will combat grease. A metal woven pot cleaner of some
kind of steel wool is helpful in removing the baked food

DISHWASHING 45

that accumulates near the top of the pot. In a pinch you
can do a good job with some sandy moss roots from the
stream. It won't hurt to boil any interchangeable eating
utensils.

We hope that no one camped upstream from you throws
his dishwater back into the stream. The days are gone,
now, when there were so few people in the wilderness
that such practices didn't matter.

It's worth the extra effort to do an especially good job
of cleaning utensils after the last meal of the trip; a light
coating of grease will help preserve rustable utensils. The
extra effort pays off when the next trip rolls around. And
there will have to be more trips.

6. Equipment

A PAINFUL SIGHT for an old-time backpacker
is to see a group of tenderfeet full of enthusiasm and ex-
pectation of a joyful vacation but loaded down with bur-
densome and inadequate equipment tents of canvas which
should be carried on a mule, long raincoats which are not
only heavy but interfere with hiking, sleeping bags which
look like a rolled mattress, pots, pans, and cans which
should never have gotten beyond road's end, and packs
everything from a rope suspending an unshapely and
weighty mass of camping gear to huge heavy packboards
that appear to have seriously depleted the national lum-
ber supply.

For all its bulk and weight the beginner's pack is often
without items of equipment which might be required for
his safety or comfort; yet it usually contains pieces of bed-
ding, clothing, mess gear, and just plain gadgets for which
he will have no need. Sporting goods stores are full of
paraphernalia which are excellent for auto camping but en-
tirely out of place on remote trails. Well-intentioned but
uninformed salesmen urge all manner of superfluous equip-
ment upon the unsuspecting neophyte.

The old-time backpacker, after meeting such a party,
thinks of his own pack in contrast: sleeping bag when
rolled not much larger than a metropolitan Sunday news-
paper, poncho weighing less than 2 pounds to serve as
both tent and raincoat, lightweight nesting mess gear,
about 2 pounds of food per day in compact waterproof
[46]

OLD-TIMER VS. TENDERFOOT 47

bags, and so on through the list. He has everything which
is essential, but every item is carefully selected for light-
ness, compactness and adequacy. He will be safe and com-
fortable come what may, yet his pack is so light and well-
designed that he may not bother to take it off when fishing
or photographing.

The needs of a backpacker are few; a comfortable pack,
protection from rain, clothing and sleeping bag to insure
warmth, and finally enough grub to satisfy a mountain
appetite. Remaining needs are incidental.

The difference between the old-timer and the tenderfoot
does not lie in experience alone. It is to be found also in a
difference in attitude. The old-timer does not select his
equipment and gear on the basis of its interesting appear-
ance or the recommendation of a salesman or friend. He
considers carefully what function each item is required to
perform and checks off these functions against the piece
of equipment selected. He also considers the climate and
terrain where he intends to do his backpacking. If he an-
ticipates only light frost on his trip he does not select an
arctic sleeping bag designed for forty below zero. If only
occasional rains are to be expected he makes a lightweight
poncho serve for both raincoat and tent. Always he insists
that every item shall be adequate, light, and compact.
Above all he is a modernist claiming for his own pleasure
the latest discoveries and technological developments of
industry wherever they may help him. What was good
enough for father is not good enough for him.

Let us apply this attitude to the selection of specific
pieces of backpacking equipment. It must be remem-
bered that every selection involves an individual choice.
Some persons are warmer blooded than others, some would
rather add a few pounds for complete comfort than go
quite so light. And above all, there are many variations

48 EQUIPMENT

of climate and terrain in the mountain regions of the
United States. The purpose of this chapter is not to state
what is best but how to select the best. A few notes on the
use of equipment will be added.

Sleeping bags

Body heat is lost during sleep by: respiration; conduc-
tion through the insulating material of which the bag is
composed and thence by radiation and conduction from
the exterior of the bag; ventilation taking place when
warm air leaks out of the bag either through the fabric
or through openings; heat of evaporation from the in-
sensible perspiration of the body, between a pint to a quart
of water being lost in this manner each night; and radia-
tion and convection from exposed portions of the body.
No practical means of minimizing heat losses from respira-
tion and insensible perspiration have yet been developed.

Thermal insulation is directly proportional to thickness
of trapped air and independent of weight. Goose and duck
down have more bulk for unit of weight than any other ma-
terial which is usable and available. A mixture of down
with 60 per cent small duck (not chicken) feathers is 80
per cent as efficient as pure down but less expensive.

If the inner and outer fabric layers of the bag are
stitched together without separating baffles, the sleeping
bag is reduced to a series of alternating strips of good and
poor insulation, and its thermal efficiency is greatly im-
paired. This objection is overcome by either (1) an inter-
mediate layer of fabric alternately sewed to the inner and
outer fabric layers or (2) narrow strips of cloth sewed
to the inner and outer layers of fabric giving approxi-
mately a % inch thickness at the seams. Both methods
are satisfactory.

Warmth is dependent upon design as well as upon in-

SLEEPING BAGS 49

sulating material. To obtain adequate warmth with mini-
mum weight the bag should be as small and as form-fitting
as is consistent with comfort but not so small that the outer
fabric layer is under tension with resulting compression
of the down. In an ideal sleeping bag the outer layer of
fabric is sufficiently larger than the inner layer to prevent
this.

The design also should have no openings which cannot
be adequately closed to prevent loss of warm air from in-
side the bag. Zippers give better closure than snaps or
buttons.

The design of the bag should allow the head and neck
to be covered. Experiments have shown that heat loss if
these parts of the body are outside the bag can amount to
one-quarter of the total heat loss of the entire body.

Tightly woven fabric is necessary not only for down-
proofness but also to prevent air permeation. Fabric must
be of minimum weight consistent with durability. Even
in a well-designed bag the fabric weighs more than the
filler which provides the warmth. Lightweight, closely
woven balloon cloth weighing 2 ounces per square yard
will last for years with care. Such a fabric has a tensile
strength of 40 pounds per inch. Four ounces per yard
should be considered a maximum weight.

Compactness. In backpacking, bulk is almost as im-
portant as weight. No bag filler compares with pure down
in compressibility. Small duck feathers are only half as
good.

Water repellency. Although the backpacker's camping
gear will include some sort of rain protection, it is desir-
able that the exterior of the sleeping bag be water-repellent.
Wetting may come from unexpected showers or contact
with damp ground or the wet interior of a tent. The bag
should not be waterproof since this will make drying the

50 EQUIPMENT

filler difficult and will condense the insensible perspira-
tion given off by the body at night.

It should be noted that a waterproof fabric is either
coated or impregnated with plastic, oil, or wax so as to
form an impermeable film. The fabric serves only as struc-
tural reinforcing of the film. Such a fabric will "sweat,"
that is, condense moisture, on the interior unless a free
flow of air is provided. This makes it useless for sleeping
bags and tight-fitting garments but useful for ponchos and
tents, where a free flow of air can be obtained.

Water-repellent fabrics, on the other hand, are treated
with only enough wax or other water-repellent material to
overcome the natural water absorption of the fibers. The
best water repellents are of the permanent type, of which
Zelan is the best known. These will remain through several
launderings or dry cleanings. Such fabrics, even though
tightly woven, permit the passage of evaporated moisture
through them. Tightly woven, water-repellent fabrics are,
therefore, largely wind-tight, but are permeable to mois-
ture. One of the best water-repellent fabrics developed in
recent years is the so-called "Shirley Cloth," named for the
British laboratories which conceived it. The yarns of this
fabric are only slightly twisted. When such a cloth is wet
the swelling cotton yarns conform to and plug up the small
holes in the cloth. Treatment with water repellent gives
further protection. The army has standardized this cloth
as "Oxford wind-resistant cloth" in various weights for
rain-resistant clothing, sleeping-bag covers, and light-
weight tents. Information about availability of fabrics can
be obtained from the "Equipment Bulletin" (see p. 149).

The backpacker has a choice of two methods for making
his sleeping bag water repellent.

1) He may use a separate water-repellent outer cover.
This design was adopted by the U.S. Army to permit the

SLEEPING BAGS 51

use of one cover for blanket bags, single down bags
(mountain), and double down bags (Arctic). Two water-
repellent fabric layers protect the filling of the bag, per-
mitting it to be exposed to heavy rains without soaking.

2) Or for the outer surface of the sleeping-bag he may
use a water-repellent Shirley-type fabric. This alternate
saves about two pounds and substantially reduces bulk. It
is the better selection for summer use in all but the rainiest
regions.

Comfort. A prevailing but mistaken notion exists that a
sleeping bag must be large to be comfortable. This is prob-
ably the explanation for the public acceptance of large
rectangular bags which only require the addition of bed-
posts for conversion into a standard bed. A sleeping bag
is not a bed but an article of clothing designed for sleep-
ing. Like clothing, it should shift and rotate with the occu-
pant. It takes a few nights for campers to adjust themselves
to the use of form-fitting bags, but almost invariably there-
after they prefer them.

Obviously, the bag should not be a strait jacket. It
must allow adequate room for moving the arms into vari-
ous sleeping positions. Experience has shown that maxi-
mum warmth and comfort and minimum weight is secured
in bags which are widest at the elbows and taper toward
each end.

Married couples often use double bags, i.e., bags big
enough for two. Owing to the reduction in total outside
bag area, a double bag need only be three quarters or
less of the weight of two single bags to provide the same
warmth.

Recommendations. The ideal sleeping bag for the back-
packer for mountain summer use (occasional rain, tem-
peratures not below 15 F.) should meet the following
specifications.

52 EQUIPMENT

1) Its design should be form-fitting, similar to the U.S.
Army mountain bag.

2) The filler should be of 2 pounds of 100 per cent duck
or goose down.

3) The interior fabric should be 2-ounce nylon. Nylon's
extreme smoothness adds to comfort, its abrasion and
"sweat rot" resistance add to its life.

4) The exterior fabric should be 3-4-ounce cotton,
Oxford-weave Shirley-type, treated with permanent water
repellent.

The nearest approach to the ideal bag presently available
are the Army mountain bag, the inner bag of the Army
Arctic bag, and copies of these produced by a few manu-
facturers. For those who wish to make their own bags,
the design can be obtained from the Office of the Quar-
termaster General, Washington, B.C. The item is "Bag
Sleeping Mountain" in army nomenclature.

In warm regions, where minimum temperatures as high
as 50 F. are expected, a blanket, the fuzzier the better,
can be sewed into a form fitting shape (Army specifica-
tion: "Bag Sleeping Wool") . Either a water-repellent shell
or a poncho should be used around the blanket bag for
rain protection and additional warmth.

Notes on use. Before using, shake the bag well from
each end toward the middle. Warmth depends on flufii-
ness.

Dry the bag frequently, exposing both interior and ex-
terior. Down and fabric absorb considerable moisture
without showing dampness. Thorough drying increases
the fluffiness of the down.

If the bag is too warm, sleep with head out and open
the zipper of the bag. If necessary, sleep with arms and
shoulders out. The body is an efficient circulating heating
system and can be cooled by partial exposure.

MATTRESS 53

If the bag is too cold, be sure it is adequately fluffed and
you are thoroughly closed in from head to foot. Dry clothes
loosened but worn also add to warmth. If the ground is
cold or too hard for comfort (as it usually is) make a bed
of needles, or dry grass. Down is a poor insulator when
compressed by the weight of the human body*

A hollow under the hips may increase comfort.

Mattress

Most experienced backpackers prefer to save the weight
of a mattress and rely either on their own ability to sleep
on the ground or take time to gather the necessary ma-
terials for a mattress of twigs, needles, or dry grass.

If, however, glacier or snow camping is anticipated, a
mattress is worth carrying. To achieve maximum lightness,
minimum storage bulk, and adequate comfort, it should be

1) An air mattress of the air-inflation type. The in-
flation opening should be large, not like an auto tire valve.

2) Only long and wide enough to extend from shoul-
ders to hips inclusive; 18 x 36 inches is about right. (The
packframe or rucksack will hold the feet off die snow,
and food bags make a satisfactory pillow.)

3) Not over 3 pounds in weight.

Various small air mattresses are commercially avail-
able. The best is a type developed but never mass pro-
duced by the Army. It is formed of nylon fabric holding
four separate longitudinal plastic tubes. Each tube is in-
dividually inflated. Full inflation of outer tubes forms
a trough for the body and discourages rolling off during
the night.

Rainwear

Except for areas free of rain in summer, rain protection
must be provided for trail and camp. A wide latitude of

54 EQUIPMENT

choice exists. The backpacker must consider several fac-
tors. If expected rains are warm and infrequent, only the
minimum protection is necessary and some hardy souls
will be willing to get wet and rely on overhanging rocks
or a brush shelter for protection and a blazing fire for dry-
ing. If expected rains are cold and wind-driven and likely
to continue for several days at a time, most backpackers
will prefer to carry a thoroughly rainproof tent. Bearing
in mind the variations in climate under which raingear is
to be used, as well as your personal predelictions, base
your selection upon considerations of weight, storage bulk,
wear resistance, tear and tensile strength, resistance to
water penetration, condensation of moisture, weight when
wet, and adequacy of design.

Fabric. The choice is narrowed to two types of fabrics,
both of which have their advantages and disadvantages,
and accordingly their proponents and opponents. These
fabrics are plastic-coated nylon and lightweight Shirley-
type Oxford. Coated nylon is lighter in weight. Both are
satisfactory in wear-and-tear resistance and tensile strength
if used with reasonable care. Coated nylon is waterproof
but condenses perspiration unless well ventilated. Shirley
cloth will wet through after a few hours when subjected to
rubbing (as when used for a garment) but transmits mois-
ture under drying conditions. Coated nylon dries more
rapidly. Water absorption and resultant weight increase
when wet is less for coated nylon than for Shirley cloth.

Recommendation. Unless long-continued heavy rains
are expected, or unless the camping trip includes the prob-
ability of heavy wind-driven rain or snow without forest
or other wind protection, satisfactory rain protection with
least weight and bulk can be secured by use of a coated
nylon poncho, coupled with a lightweight windbreaker
jacket of Shirley cloth. The jacket will be discussed under

RAINGEAR 55

"Clothing." The most thoroughly tested poncho design is
that adopted by the U.S. Army. Such a poncho is used in
several ways :

1) In heavy rain it is thrown over both the hiker and
his pack, giving protection to both. Its fullness provides
for adequate ventilation and minimizes sweating. It is
awkward for climbing over rocks but the edges can be
tied around the waist if necessary.

2) When the ground is wet but no rain shelter is neces-
sary it is used as a ground cloth.

3) It can serve as a sleeping bag cover to break the
wind or provide hasty rain protection.

4) It can be improvised into an open-end pup tent or
a lean-to for rain protection. Several ponchos can be
snapped together for this purpose provided they are of
the same design.

If climatic conditions require a tent, the tapered tent
(see p. 56) is recommended for two or three persons. It
can be constructed of either coated nylon or Shirley cloth.
Suggested dimensions (in inches) are as follows: width
at front, 64, at back 30; height at front 51, at back 20;
length of ridge, 88 ; triangular front flaps, 60 x 60 x 30,
joined by 42-inch zipper; width of sod cloths, 10. The
Army mountain tent of coated nylon as well as many
special designs put out by sporting goods stores are com-
mercially available. Even the lightest are heavy compared
with the nylon poncho.

Notes on pitching tents

Tent pegs are not necessary. In forested country they
can be made as needed; above timberline rocks can be
used to anchor the lines.

The elastic method of pitching tent or poncho prevents
tearing and keeps it continuously taut. Rubber bands one

56 EQUIPMENT

inch wide are cut from inner tubes and tied to all sus-
pension and tension points on the tent or poncho.

If the poncho is pitched as an open-end pup tent strong
cord (about % 6 inches in diameter) should be used as a
ridge line, thus taking the strain off the lightweight fabric.

2- 8" Zipper* lo permit
triangular vent to drop inw

Tapered tent for three men. From Manual of Ski Mountaineering.

If the tent is provided with a floor, beds of forest duff
should be placed under (not on) the floor cloth.

Cord for guy lines should not be forgotten. A cinch knot
or hitch should be used that will permit tightening and
loosening of guy lines without the necessity of untying
and retying knots. The rolling hitch can be slipped in any
direction but it tightens under tension.

Clothing

For summer camping in ordinary mountain climates
(occasional rain, temperatures down to light frost) cloth-
ing presents no problems except that most backpackers
carry too much.

CLOTHING 57

Change of clothing. Normally a backpack trip will not
last for more than two weeks without a return to base or
to a previously established camp. For this reason a change
of clothing, except for socks, is unnecessary. Those with
strong instincts for cleanliness can take time on a warm
day for general laundering operations. Others become
oblivious to the problem of clean clothes.

Headgear. A hat should have a brim wide enough to
afford sun and rain protection; it should be reasonably
waterproof, and flexibility is to be preferred. An old felt
hat does the job nicely; so does a cloth hat if constructed
of water-repellent fabric.

Underclothes. Most hikers prefer to wear shorts only,
without undershirt. Personal preference should govern.

Shirt. A tough shirt is needed. It may be of cotton for
warmer climates, wool for cold and rainy areas. One shirt
is enough, but a second one is justified if both are to be
worn at once for cold weather.

Trousers. Water-repellent twill or Shirley cloth trousers
insure reasonable dryness. A 9-ounce fabric should be the
top weight limit. Heavier fabrics are stiff, hot, and uncom-
fortable (duck-hunting trousers are in this class).

Preshrunk blue jeans are satisfactory for mild-weather
regions. Cut off the cuffs and collect less dirt.

The U.S. Army mountain pants are hard to beat. They
are tough but not too heavy; they are of a roomy, non-
confining cut; there is plenty of pocket space; and, because
of their ski-pant treatment at the ankle, they are closed at
the bottom and keep the legs amazingly clean in country
that is dusty. Hiking shorts swimming-trunk type will
provide a welcome and cooler variation on sunny days, as
well as expediting the tan that most travelers of the trail
enjoy collecting. In brushy country the shorts will be
worn more comfortably in the rucksack.

58 EQUIPMENT

Shoes. The kind of shoes to select depends in part upon
the nature of the terrain to be traveled. If there is little or
no steep snow to travel over, or if the underfooting is for
the most part dry and not covered by the acre with
baseball-sized sharp rocks, ankle-high sneakers serve ad-
mirably. They are very light, inexpensive, and sure-footed.
They are not good for a man with weak arches, however,
and the canvas tops do not remain intact for more than
100 miles of reasonably rough going. They will wet
through very quickly, moreover, and cause foot perspira-
tion to accumulate. Nevertheless, hundreds of hikers have
used them happily on month-long Sierra trips. Leather-
topped basketball shoes give more support and are much
longer-lasting and correspondingly more expensive.

The army's Munson Last, as represented in the G.I.
service shoe (or cut-down combat boot), combined with
composition soles, is hard to beat for comfort and trac-
tion on the summer trail. And if one is packing animals, a
leather shoe offers more protection from a hoof. They keep
the feet much cleaner than sneakers.

Boots nailed with hob slivers, Swiss edge nails, or Tri-
counis have a distinct advantage if there is much snow to
cover, or in mossy country with a wet summer climate.
But nails require more skillful use on rock especially
smooth rock than does rubber. The best compromise
so far discovered for summer mountaineering is the
Bramani-type sole, consisting of long-wearing rubber
cleats, mounted on a lightweight boot; that is, on a boot
much lighter than the army's mountain boot. The Bramani
sole holds very well on rock, on snow that is not too hard-
frozen and smooth, on glacial ice, on muddy or grassy
slopes, and will even do reasonably well, because of the
cleats, on wet, mossy rock but not on smooth wet rock.

A plain leather sole offers so little traction that it is

SHOES

59

dangerous in most terrain, and should therefore be
avoided.

High boots are usually unnecessary, are needlessly
heavy, and restrict the circulation. Trousers of tough ma-
terial protect the legs sufficiently from brush; and rattle-
snakes, if they strike at all, seldom hit above the ankle.

Rubber-cleateJ (Bramanl -type sole) ski boot

Tricouni nail pattern using the heel plate,
studs, and edge nails-, sponge-rubber heel

Shoes should be fitted to allow plenty of toe room over
two suitable pairs of socks. Allow for the tendency for feet
to spread under a pack load, but don't have a sloppy fit
in the heel. If you put into use shoes which have been
in storage for several seasons examine the stitching to be
sure that it has not deteriorated. Dress leather shoes

60 EQUIPMENT

lightly with a boot wax to keep them pliable, but do not
soften them with too frequent applications of shoe creams
or oils.

The necessity for breaking shoes in before the start of a
trip is mentioned in several other places in the book, but
is again stressed here because of its importance.

Socks. The foot should be well cushioned by two pairs of
socks unless experience and good condition prove that one
is enough. The inner pair should be smooth and lighter,
the outer one of heavy, soft wool. At least one change of
socks should be carried. Socks are subject to heavy wear.
Only new socks should be taken.

Jacket and sweater. A light windproof-water repellent
jacket with hood is very desirable. A sweater will be re-
quired in cold regions; where weather is mild a sleeveless
slip-on may be adequate.

The pack

The downfall of most amateur backpackers is either a
poor pack or lack of knowledge of how to use it. Con-
sideration of the functional requirements of a good pack
is necessary.

The combined mass of the pack and the body above the
hip should balance on the hip joints with minimum for-
ward lean of the torso. This requirement may sound tech-
nical, but is quite simple once it is fully visualized. A hiker
compensates for the backward pull of his pack by lean-
ing forward; the greater the backward pull the more he
leans to get the body and pack in balance on the hip joints.
It is not possible to hike in any other way, and it is not
comfortable to hike under a severe forward lean. The
practical application of this principle are known to all
backpackers.

Heavy articles should be placed as far forward (close

THE PACK 61

to the back) as possible, either immediately against the
pack frame or in the two forward bulges of the rucksack.
Heavy articles should also be packed as high as is pos-
sible without making the pack topheavy. The reason behind
this rule is that a forward lean of the torso (10 degrees for
instance) will result in a greater forward movement of
the center of gravity of the pack if heavy articles are
packed high.

Most of the weight of the pack should rest on the hips.
The function of shoulder straps is primarily to hold the
pack in position. The pelvic and leg bones with their
large muscles are better designed for supporting a load
than are the spine and shoulders.

Some sort of a frame is indispensable to transmit the
load from the top of the pack to the hips. This in practice
is done by (1) the packboard, (2) the Bergans-type ruck-
sack, or (3) two thrust bars connecting the upper point of
attachment of the shoulder straps with the lower forward
corners of the pack. A belly band at belt height forces the
weight into the hips and permits loosening of the shoulder
straps.

To compress the pack and concentrate the weight for-
ward, rugged cinch straps or cords are necessary.

A bag with exterior pockets is easier to pack, more
waterproof and provides better accessibility than a roll.

Shoulder straps should rest close to the neck. They are
uncomfortable, tiresome, and prevent free swinging of
the shoulders when they rest near the shoulder tips. This
result is secured in all good packs by attaching the shoul-
der straps close together on the upper portion of the pack.

Shoulder straps should be tapered so as to be broad
over the shoulders but narrow under the armpits. Narrow
straps of uniform width cut the shoulders; wide straps
chafe the armpits.

62 EQUIPMENT

The bottom attachment of the shoulder straps should be
as far back on the pack as practicable. Otherwise the pack
is pushed away from the shoulders. This is particularly
important with the Bergans-lype rucksack, on which shoul-
der straps should be attached well back of the forward
points of the frame.

Recommendation. For loads under 45 pounds the ruck-
sack with either a rigid frame or two thrust bars is gen-
erally preferred to the packboard. It must, however, be
properly packed with heavy articles forward and high and
the rear hump thoroughly compressed. The ideal is a pack
that is wide, high and thin when all gear is stowed. The
U.S. Army rucksack is of the rigid-frame type. It is satis-
factory in design but could be lightened considerably (the
Air Corps was getting most of the aluminum when the
rucksacks were manufactured). It is too large for most
women.

For those who wish to carry heavy loads the pack frame
is satisfactory. It may be constructed of aluminum tub-
ing and covered with canvas. For ruggedness and rea-
sonable weight the army plywood pack frame is first choice
in this class.

Considerable weight can be saved and the necessity
of bending the rucksack frame to fit the user avoided by
the insertion in any well constructed rucksack (without
frame) of two duralumin bars % x %$x20 inches. The
upper ends of the bars are attached to the shoulder-
strap suspension in such manner as to permit free pivoting
action. The lower ends of the bars are attached to the
lower front corners of the rucksack. A triangle without a
bottom member results. The bars are bent and twisted to
clear the shoulder blades and held in position on the front
surface of the pack by sewing on covering fabric strips.
The exact method of attachment of the bars will depend

MISCELLANY 63

on the construction of the rucksack and the ingenuity of
the maker.

Miscellany

Flashlight. Each person should carry a small flashlight
(preferably one using a single standard-size cell). It is
handy at night. One standard size flashlight for the party
(3-cell head-attachment type preferred) is desirable if
night travel is expected. The safety value of a flashlight
on off-trail travel, and its use in the event one becomes
lost are mentioned elsewhere in this book.

Toilet articles. These should be confined to necessaries.
Omit the large bath towel. A single light plastic (rayon)
towel will suffice. A small sized bar of soap in all prob-
ability is more than the party will use shaving included.
If shaving should be deemed a must, one razor will cer-
tainly do a party unless all men must shave simultaneously.

Handkerchiefs. Two large bandannas are recommended.
Disposable tissues are too bulky, and bulk can be almost
as troublesome as weight. (If this counsel is disregarded,
disposable tissues should at least be disposed of in the
campfire.) Bandannas can also be put over the head to
discourage mosquitoes and help keep one's neck warm
when it is cold.

Dark glasses. These will be desirable if the trip includes
snow, glaciers, or extensive hiking above timberline. If
much snow is expected an extra pair of dark glasses for
the party should be taken in case there is breakage.

Knife. The new boy-scout-type knife based on the Army
and Marine pocket knife is best. A hunting knife is not
necessary but one in the party may prove useful in cook-
ing. Hatchets and axes should be left at the roadhead; they
are not needed for securing fire wood.

First aid. See chapter 8, Mountain Medicine.

64 EQUIPMENT

Mess gear. One dessert spoon per person and a pocket
knife complete necessary eating tools. A large cup serves
as both cup and plate.

Cooking equipment. A gasoline stove is not necessary
unless camps above timberline are planned. (For a few
such camps wood can be carried.) The primus type is
good. The obsolete U.S. Army single burner stove (Cole-
man type) is efficient but lacks stability, lightness, and
compactness. Far superior is the standard Army one-
burner stove (Aladdin type) . It is designed to fit into the
mountain cook set and burns either ethyl or white gasoline.
Gasoline requirements can be held to a % pint per man
day, but don't count on this until you try it. Ordinarily,
the camper can find enough dead wood for his fire.

In country where rocks are scarce or are too rounded,
pots can be hung over the fire on forked green sticks
which have been driven into the ground. If there is an
abundance of flat or nearly flat rocks, it is a simple matter
to improvise a rock stove. Where convenient it can be
built against a large sheltering boulder. There are only
two essential features of the stove; it must support two
sides of each pot high enough off the ground to permit
building a fire underneath, and it must permit adequate
flow of air to the fire. The camper can use his ingenuity
to get an optimum working arrangement and minimum
smoke in the cook's eyes. If the firebox is too deep, more
wood is used than need be; if it is too wide, stability of
the stove is likely to suffer the soup likewise.

This sort of open fireplace blackens the kettles, but
only to make them more efficient as heat absorbers; a few
odd pieces of cardboard between the nesting pots will
minimize the spreading of soot, and a bag can be provided
to wrap around the outside of the nest to keep the pack
clean. A further advantage of the rock stove is that it is

COOKING EQUIPMENT 65

thermostatically controlled: if the fire becomes too hot
and the pots boil over, the crisis is self-cured. This may
seem a very simple observation, but it is surprising how
many cooks have been singed a bit while trying to rescue
boiling pots that can take care of themselves.

If one cannot be reasonably sure of finding flat rocks,
a stiff wire grill, with or without legs, is usually worth
its weight. Whenever one can count on the availability
of rocks to prop up the corners, an aluminum plate grill
is excellent. The plate should be roughly 18 inches by 9
inches by %2 inches thick, with about % inch around
the edge bent up 30 degrees or so to provide rigidity. If
the size is appreciably increased, the thickness must also
be increased. The plate is a little heavy (3 Ibs.) for a party
of two backpackers, but will do for four to six, and serves
as a frying pan for hot cakes, sliced meat or fish, as well
as for a pot support. In the latter capacity it has the ad-
vantage over a wire grill in that the pots don't get sooted,
except lightly on the sides. The pots will not heat so fast,
however (or burn so fast) , as on a direct flame. If the plate
gets bent, it is easy to bend it straight again. A hot fire
burns the top of the plate clean, and the loose soot can
be quickly removed from the bottom by rubbing sand over
it with a clump of grass or the sole of one's shoe. Avoid
scratching the upper surface. The plate is slipped into a
cloth sack and carried in a pack against the pack frame.

Two to four pots are desirable, plus a medium-sized
light frying pan if you have omitted the aluminum plate.
Usually only two will be on the fire at once, but a third is
very convenient for water supply, and a fourth is useful
when the size of the party warrants. The pots can be
light aluminum, or suitable large-size cans, with bails
either built in or improvised, and with a lid or two. It is
preferable that the pots nest for carrying, but this is not

66 EQUIPMENT

essential. To prevent waste of space in the pack, they can
be filled with small items and surrounded with clothing
or food bags. The largest pot should hold at least a pint
per person and the next largest should be nearly as large.
If the pots are too tall and narrow, it will take a long time
to heat the contents; if too shallow, the contents will spill.
The ideal shape is the compromise that will also fit both
the pack and the grate or plate. Be sure to bring a stirring
spoon long enough to keep the soup thumb-free.

Expedients. Simplicity being the virtue that it is, we
recommend that you pursue it in the wilderness kitchen.
The simplest utensils are cans; a large juice can sits within
a two-pound coffee can, which in turn nests in a No. 10 can.
A "billycan grabber" bought or improvised allows
you to use any can without a handle. A can may be set
on the ground and a fire built around it, leaving no sooted
stones to mark the spot and making way for the campfire
later.

Food bags. Nearly all grub except butter should be
stowed in waterproof food bags. The ideal fabric for mak-
ing such bags is lightweight nylon coated with polyvinyl
chloride (Koroseal) . Any lightweight plastic-coated fabric
is satisfactory provided the coating does not disintegrate
when in contact with animal fat. A sample can be smeared
with bacon grease and left for a few days as a test. Three
sizes of bags plus one oversize bag to cover sooty pots are
desirable. These bags can be made on the sewing machine
at home. Length should be twice width, and tape (not draw
string) should be sewed on to the edge seam % inch below
the open end.

As a final reminder: going light requires the saving of
every unnecessary ounce and the elimination of every un-
necessary article. It is easy to overload.

7. Map and Compass

WE DO NOT WANT the novice to feel that he
must go back to school or take a correspondence course
in map reading before he can safely have fun in the moun-
tains. Many trips are open to the person who knows no
more about cartography than how to interpret a road map
roughly. Only a sketch map showing the current status of
trails their route and length is required to plan a
wilderness trail trip. One can sometimes consult a local
"expert on the chosen terrain, make a few notes of place
names and distances, and get by with no map at all. There
will probably be reasonably accurate trail signs to follow.
Do not avoid wilderness travel because you do not have
experience with map and compass. Ask a few questions
and start out, taking due caution not to go over your head.
However, if you have no experienced leader and can
find no local expert; if you would like to try some cross-
country travel; if you would like to have the fun of plan-
ning your route on paper, of knowing where you are and
what you are seeing and exactly where you are going next;
and if you want the satisfaction of displaying a map on
which the trails and routes you have covered are promi-

[67]

68 MAP AND COMPASS

nently marked then you should become proficient in map
reading.

A great deal has been written about the use of map and
compass. Our emphasis is directed toward developing the
ability to visualize the land from the map, and the map
from the land. Nothing in map reading is more important.
This was borne out time and again in World War II. It too
often happened that military men crowded their minds
with memorized signs and symbols and were not able to
tell quickly, if at all, where they were on the map.

Study of the technicalities of map reading cannot sub'
stitute for practice in the field with map in hand. There-
fore, we suggest the following steps in learning to know
maps:

1) Obtain the United States Geological Survey's topo-
graphic map of the terrain in which you live, or of moun-
tainous country with which you are familiar. These maps
may be obtained from Superintendent of Documents,
Washington, D.C., and are worth far more than the modest
sum charged. An index map of the state or states in which
you wish to travel should be requested to enable you to
select the desired sheets.

2) Fold the map, face out, along the east-west center
line. Accordion-fold vertically into four parts, with the
northeast corner on top to keep the quadrangle name visi-
ble. The resulting size is convenient for home use and
filing. For field use, accordion-fold the map again into four
parts along east-west lines to an easy pocket size. This
method of folding increases the convenience of using the
map, particularly in the wind, because any part can be
examined by merely opening folds, without re-folding.
The exposed face of the map will get dirty, but a new map
costs only a few cents if you can bear to part with a map
which has traveled enough to become colorful.

TOPOGRAPHY 69

3) From the legend on the back of the map and from
the marginal data on the bottom of the face learn the few
symbols, the scale, and the contour interval which are
needed in order to interpret the topography and culture
properly.

4) Now become familiar with the contour topography
on your map by repeated comparison with the terrain so
that you no longer see it as a collection of lines, but as a
relief map.

If you wish to become quickly familiar with extreme
types of terrain, you may wish to add to your collection the
finest topographic maps the Geological Survey has pro-
duced: Yosemite Valley Special Sheet (for cliff sculpture),
Mount Rainier National Park (for glaciers), Grand Can-
yon (for desert land forms). You may even want to
requisition one of the walls of your home, put these maps
up on a temporary mounting and live with them for a
while. They are good company and will afford welcome
and rewarding diversion from the things you ought to be
doing.

5) It is usually desirable to supplement the Geological
Survey sheets with other maps which lack topography but
are up to date on information about trails and other cul-
ture. You will note that the topographic maps are often
obsolete in this respect. Forest Service and Park Service
maps provide this information for most of the public do-
main in which you will wish to travel light.

6) Once one has mastered reasonably well the relation
of contour lines to land forms, he can begin to interpolate
the things that the map does not record. Observations of
snow depth, forage, and forest cover in a limited area
enable one to predict from the map which parts of the
route are likely to be blocked by snow, where stock may
feed, or where timberline may restrict high camps. For

70 MAP AND COMPASS

example, if the map shows a place where a stream
meanders, the ground must be nearly level there. In the
mountains this means a meadow. Campsites and feed for
pack animals would not be certain but would probably be
found.

Unless three dimensional aerial photos (available for
some mountain areas through the U.S. Forest Service)
are used, even the best of the maps do not take away all
the fun of pioneering. A pass may look easy when depicted
with 100-foot contours yet may turn out to be blocked by
a sheer 50-foot bluff. The topographer may have over-
looked a lake, or may have drawn in freehand a slope that
he could not see. A trail may have disappeared without a
trace, a spring or stream may have gone dry, or a miner's
cabin may long since have fallen under heavy snow. Such
discrepancies may fascinate or irritate the map reader; in
either event he knows he can always find his way back.

Orientation

In order to identify terrain features and follow one's
progress on a map several simple skills must be learned.
For effective field use, a map should usually be oriented
so that the directions on map and terrain correspond. Sev-
eral methods are possible:

1) It is easiest to orient a map from your known posi-
tion and a known landmark and it is seldom necessary to
use another method. Simply place a match vertically on
the map over your position and another over the land-
mark; rotate the map and sight across the matches until
they align with the landmark, and the map is oriented
accurately.

2) If no landmarks can be identified, use a compass:
Keeping the north-south line of the compass case parallel
to a north-south line on the map, rotate the map and com-

ORIENTATION 71

pass until the needle coincides with the declination (see
below) shown on the map. All map and ground directions
will then coincide.

3) Lacking a compass, you may orient your map after
determining south by use of a watch and the sun: Point
the hour hand (at local standard time) toward the sun;
south is about halfway between the hour hand and 12. For
greater accuracy, use this method at mid-day.

To find your position, assuming that you don't know it
but can recognize three landmarks: Place a match near
the center of a sheet of thin paper; sight across to another
match lined up with one landmark and draw a straight
line in that direction; without moving the paper sight
across the center match to each of the other landmarks
and draw similar lines; place the paper over the map and
move it until all three lines will, on the map, pass through
the three landmarks. The center point is your position.
Orient by rotating the map with any of the landmarks as
in (1) above.

Two recognizable landmarks will serve if you have a
compass (and the landmarks are separated by an approxi-
mate right angle). Orient the map by compass; place a
match vertically on the map above one of the landmarks
and move another match along the near edge of the map
until it aligns with the actual landmark; draw a line be-
tween the two matches; repeat the process for the other
landmark; the intersection of the two lines will be your
approximate position. The use of a third landmark reduces
your error.

To identify unknown landmarks reverse the procedure
for identifying position. If there is only one line of sight,
the position of the landmark is determinable only if you
can judge its distance, recognize its shape from the map,
and read its position with reference to intervening ridges.

72 MAP AND COMPASS

Compass

In order to orient a map with a compass it is necessary
to understand magnetic declination. The compass needle
does not point to the north pole (true north) but to the
magnetic north pole, which is north of Cincinnati and
about 1,300 miles short of the north pole. Consequently,
magnetic north is east of true north when one is in the
West, and vice versa. The difference between true and
magnetic north is called declination. To obtain a true
map reading in the West, add the declination to the mag-
netic reading.

In a pinch, the bearing of the North Star may be taken
as true north, and by day the sun may be used as explained
above.

Compass bearing. To determine a bearing on a map,
center the compass over the point on the map from which
the bearing is to be taken, and orient the map. Then read
the bearing where a line from the center of the compass
to the actual object crosses the dial readings of the com-
pass.

Compasses are marked according to two major systems.
The azimuth system is easier to use and standard with the
U.S. armed forces ; in it the bearings are the degrees of a
circle marked clockwise from north. A northwest bearing
would be given as 315.

Most civilian surveying is based upon four segments of
the circle, graduated from north and south 90 in each
direction to east and west; thus a northwest bearing would
be given as north 45 west.

Plotting bearings. Center the compass over the point on
the map from which the bearing was taken, orient the map,
and project a line through the graduation on the compass
which corresponds to the bearing. The point to which the

COMPASS 73

bearing is taken will be on that line if the reading and plot-
ting are accurate.

Traveling by compass. Traveling by compass is not often
necessary, but can, on occasion, be very important. In re-
stricted forest, in fog, or under other conditions of poor
visibility, you must rely upon the accuracy of the compass,
allowing for any local magnetic influence. Remember,
however, that under stress your sense of direction may be
off as much as 180 and unless you have previously
marked on the compass case which end of the needle is
north, the compass will seem to confirm your nonsense of
direction.

Orient the map and determine the bearing on the first
leg of your route. Then locate on that bearing a landmark
as far as you can see and proceed toward it for the distance
required. If the landmark is likely to be obscured for any
reason, choose an intermediate spot on the same line be-
fore the distant one vanishes.

If no landmarks can be seen the last man should then
direct the travel by compass, sighting on those ahead to a
straight line. If you must turn to pass a cliff or ford a
stream, return to the original line by recording the new
angle of direction (a right angle is easiest) and the dis-
tance covered; a shorter but less accurate method is to
leave the original course diagonally, clear the obstacle,
and return at the same angle to your course and with the
same number of paces, once the obstacle is passed.

Summer visibility is usually so good that the use of a
compass is rarely required except, perhaps, to orient a
map. Nevertheless, if there is any chance of getting lost in
a prolonged storm or in dense forests, or in darkness when
travel is necessary, one should have a compass and know
how to use it. The best counsel is to take any old camp in
a storm, or in heavy fog or darkness, and stay snug there.

8. Mountain Medicine

IT is SURPRISING how infrequently accident and
illness befall the hiker. Yet once in a while something
does happen, and since you can't phone the family doctor,
you have to know what to do. It is wise if at least one
person on the trip has had first-aid training. The American
Red Cross courses in this field are recommended. Their
First Aid Text-Book might become a handy book to have
along, and the weight is not prohibitive, especially if ani-
mals are carrying the packs. Specialized help will often be
several days' travel away, and so you may be forced to
practice some "second aid" in addition to first aid. Re-
member this general rule: the body tries to heal itself and
will do so if it is protected and gently guided.

It is a general misconception that any who venture far
from the end of the road must be rugged and tough. You
don't have to be an Atlas to carry a pack nor a Hercules
to climb the mountains. You should be in reasonably sound
health and not too far out of condition. Try out your mus-

[74]

BLISTERS 75

cles a few times near home before taking off for the wilder-
ness. It is especially important to break in new boots be-
fore the first day on the trail.

Blisters

It is easier to prevent blisters than to cure them. In
breaking in boots some people find that wearing two pairs
of socks helps reduce rubbing; an inner pair of silk hose is
recommended. If an area begins to hurt, remove your boot
and socks immediately and cover the tender spot with a
patch of adhesive tape. Do it when you suspect that you
are getting a blister, not when you think you have one.

In spite of all advice on the prevention of blisters, there
is always someone who develops a fine crop. To treat a
blister, sterilize a needle and the skin of the blister, and
prick the blister at its edge, releasing the fluid. When the
fluid is all drained out, leave the skin intact and cover
the blister and surrounding skin with a patch of adhesive
tape. Do not put gauze or cotton between the tape and the
blister, unless the skin has already been pulled off, but
plaster the tape directly on the blister. Leave it there and
don't pull it off, or the loose skin will come off leaving a
raw spot. At least five days is required for healing.

Sunburn

In the higher altitudes the ultraviolet rays are stronger
and sunburn occurs more easily. Until a good coat of tan
is obtained, protection should be provided, either by
clothing or by medicaments. People with very tender skin
sometimes find it necessary to block out all rays by using
zinc oxide ointment or actors' makeup. Many sunburn lo-
tions and creams have recently been put on the market;
whether these are effective or not depends a great deal on
individual needs, and they should be given previous trial.

76 MOUNTAIN MEDICINE

Sunburn should be treated in the same way as any burn.
The red area, provided it has not blistered, may be cov-
ered with any soothing ointment; for example, Antipyrexol
or Mentholatum. If blisters occur, they should be treated
with a bland ointment, such as boric acid ointment, and
covered with a gauze dressing until healed. Treat the raw
burn as an open cut. Put on a dressing to keep the dirt
out, and it will heal itself.

Burns. What has been said on the treatment of sunburn
applies as well to burns caused by any hot agent.

Snow blindness

The amount of snow encountered in the summertime is
usually not sufficient to cause snow blindness. At very high
elevations, however, it is possible to travel for several
hours, even all day, on snow fields, and under such con-
ditions especially if the sun is bright the eyes may be
burned and snow blindness may result. This is a very
painful and distressing affliction. Adequate dark glasses
can prevent it. If no glasses are available, tie a bandanna
over the eyes with a very small hole cut in front of each
eye.

If snow blindness occurs, the eyes must be bandaged
and rested until pain and spasm are relieved probably
for several days. Apply cold compresses over the closed
lids for from 15 to 20 minutes at a time, putting drops of
a bland oil such as castor or mineral oil in the eyes, or
irrigating them with boric acid solution several times a
day gives some relief. (See Manual of Ski Mountaineering
for more detailed discussion.)

Lacerations

Cuts can vary in size and seriousness from small clean
knife cuts to the large, deep, jagged cuts made by falling

LACERATIONS 77

rocks. Treatment may vary from the application of a
band-aid to a complicated repair.

First stop the flow of blood. Firm pressure of a compress
over the wound is almost always enough to stop the flow;
raising the injured part higher than the body will help.
Don't use a tourniquet unless you have to, and even then
only if you are skilled in its use. (It is my own belief that
in every wound the blood flow can be stopped by pressure
alone and that the tourniquet should be discarded.

H.S.K.)

When the laceration is larger than a band-aid can cover,
special methods should be used. If medical aid is available
within 12 hours, cover the wound with a compress and go
to that aid. If it is not, wash the wound with a salt solution
until all visible dirt particles are removed, if that is pos-
sible. Prepare the salt solution by dissolving 2 level tea-
spoonfuls of ordinary salt for each quart of boiling water,
and use when cooled.

After irrigating the wound with salt solution, apply skin
antiseptic (see below) to the skin only; press the edges
of the cut together and fasten as adequately as possible
with adhesive "butterflies" (see figure) ; apply sterile
gauze dressing; and bandage firmly. If the wound is large
or much contaminated with 1 dirt, take penicillin tablets
V tablets, 250 milligrams each, four times a day. They
are best taken with water on an empty stomach. Some
people become allergic to penicillin and may develop a
serious reaction. Ask the victim about his previous ex-
perience and withhold penicillin if he has any knowledge
of previous reaction.

[NOTE : There is nothing static, it seems, about the so called wonder
drugs. Research is always turning up some new facet sometimes
not too good of last year's sure cure. Ask your own physician;
keep current! ED.]

78

MOUNTAIN MEDICINE

Cut Fold Cut

Cut Fold CuK

First Fold

Adhesive
Side

Second Fold
Apply Antiseptic to this FUj>

Cloth Side

Finished

The butterfly bandage with 1^-inch adhesive tape.
From Manual of Ski Mountaineering.

fractures and dislocations

Fractures of the extremities must be immobilized with
splints. The Velpeau bandage is considered preferable for
immobilization of the upper arm and shoulder, and padded

BANDAGING

79

d

The Velpeau bandage (modified). Begin with two turns (1, 2) around
waist, rolling toward affected side; bring third turn upward across chest,
down behind shoulder and arm, upward over shoulder, across the back,
and horizontally across forearm (3). More turns can be applied (4, 5),
depending on desired stability of arm and length of bandage roll. From
Manual of Ski Mountaineering.

80 MOUNTAIN MEDICINE

splints for the forearm. It is best to use traction splints on
fractures of the thigh and lower leg, but such splints are
rarely available in the wilderness, and padded splints must
be improvised. Sides of boxes or kyacks can be utilized
for the shorter splints. It is more difficult to improvise
suitable splints for thigh fractures, where longer splints
are necessary, since long saplings are often too supple and
larger trees too heavy and bulky. Perhaps the easiest
course is to make camp for the injured person where he
lies and send for a suitable splint. This, of course, may not
be possible on a mountain ridge, and each case must be
considered individually and that procedure followed which
will cause least damage.

For the technique of splint application, see the Ameri-
can Red Cross First Aid Text-Book

In a compound fracture additional care must be taken.
If possible, the skin surrounding the wound should be
washed with soap and water and the wound and bone ir-
rigated with two quarts of clean salt water (the prepara-
tion of which is described under Lacerations). The skin
around the wound but not the open wound and bone
should be painted with a skin antiseptic (for example, 2
per cent tincture of iodine or a commercially prepared
mercurial antiseptic). If the limb is greatly out of align-
ment, gentle traction is exerted and the limb made straight.
Sometimes protruding ends of bone will be pulled inside
the flesh. This, of course, protects them, but at the same
time will bury dirt if it is not already removed. Be diligent
in your preparation to prevent this. The wound should
then be covered with sterile gauze, bandaged, and the limb
splinted. The injured person should take penicillin tablets
by mouth immediately. (See page 77.)

DISLOCATIONS 81

Injuries to joints

Often it is not possible to distinguish a sprain from a
fractured joint, unless X-ray examination is made. Only
when the injury appears to be so slight that the additional
support of tape would allow the victim to travel without
undue discomfort may the joint be taped and further use
allowed. For all joint injuries, a doctor should be con-
sulted as soon as possible in order to avert any permanent
disability which might otherwise result.

Dislocations should be considered fractures until proved
otherwise and splinted as simple fractures are.

If the shoulder of a victim who knows the injury is re-
current is dislocated, an exception to this rule may be
made, and the dislocation reduced in the following way:
place the injured person on his side in a horizontal posi-
tion, his injured shoulder down so that the arm can hang
down freely below him. Tie a weight of about ten pounds
to the wrist. In from 30 to 45 minutes the shoulder muscles
should tire enough to permit the dislocation to reduce
itself. If they do not, treat the injury as a simple fracture
and seek medical aid as soon as possible. A Velpeau
bandage is recommended for the immobilization of a dis-
located shoulder.

Shock

With any of the severe injuries described above, shock
is a common accompaniment. Prevention of shock is easier
than its cure. To prevent shock, the injured person should
be laid down, head lower than feet, and should be kept
comfortably warm. Do not overheat the victim in your
zeal to prevent shock. A good rule is to make him com-
fortable. If extra clothing is necessary, use it. If he is too
hot, some of his clothing may be removed. Prevent the

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SHOCK 83

victim from perspiring since salt is thus lost from the
blood, and the blood is brought to the skin, being de-
flected from the general circulation and from important
organs, where it is badly needed.

As every first-aider knows, the injured person should
be moved as little as possible and then only with caution,
so that he will not be injured further.

To minimize shock, pain must be relieved. Capsules of
codeine sulfate (1 grain) and aspirin (5 grains) obtained
on prescription will help relieve pain and should be in-
cluded in the medical supplies. Aspirin may cause perspira-
tion and should be used with caution, not more than once
every four to six hours. If morphine is available, a % -grain
tablet may be dissolved under the tongue every four hours
for severe pain.

Hot tea, coffee, or chocolate is helpful when the patient
is able to take and retain it, but avoid giving too much
fluid, since it will then become necessary for the patient
to empty his bladder extremely difficult if he is supine.

Heat stroke and exhaustion

Exposure to high temperatures may have such diverse
effects as heat cramps, exhaustion, or stroke.

Heat cramps occur in people who perspire profusely,
thereby losing salt and water from the blood. The cramps
are characterized by spasms of the muscles of the arms and
legs and abdomen, and may be prevented or cured by
drinking salt water (1 teaspoonful of salt per gallon of
water) or by taking salt tablets.

In heat exhaustion, weakness, dizziness, profuse perspi-
ration, and weak and rapid pulse occur, in addition to the
cramps. There is rarely loss of consciousness. Treatment
consists of rest in a cool place, the maintenance of body
warmth, and the intake of saline or sweet drinks.

84 MOUNTAIN MEDICINE

In heat stroke or sunstroke the heat-regulating mecha-
nism of the body is overwhelmed. The onset is often rapid
and consciousness is lost early. The face is flushed, the
skin hot and dry. The temperature is elevated, often to a
severe degree. The pulse is strong and rapid. Treatment
is heroic and consists of cold-water baths or sprays and
even ice enemas. As the temperature is reduced, cold
sponge baths should be given.

Snake bites

Many people are hysterically afraid of snakes. Beneficial
snakes are frequently mistaken for poisonous ones and
killed. Often hikers are petrified with fear on going into
"snake country." This fear is greatly exaggerated. Snakes
will retreat when approached by humans and will bite only
as a last resort. Most bites occur when the snake is un-
able to flee, and, like any cornered animal, strikes to de-
fend.

In the Far West the most dangerous poisonous snake is
the rattler, of which there are several species. The Sonoran
coral snake is found in the southern desert regions of
Arizona and New Mexico, but it is nocturnal, is seldom
seen, and rarely bites man. The rattler is found in Cali-
fornia from low deserts up to elevations of 7,000 feet;
occasionally one may be found as high as 10,000 feet.
Rattlers prefer the shade under brush and rocks, although
they may bask in the sun on the tops of rocks for short
periods of time. They don't mind streams.

The venom of these snakes is poisonous to humans, but
the seriousness of a snake bite depends on the size of the
person bitten and on the amount of venom injected. This
latter is determined by the size and age of the snake,
whether it has recently fed and thus recently expended its
reserve of venom, and on the degree of penetration of the

SNAKE BITES 85

fangs. When all these variables are taken into account, it
is evident that a lethal dose of venom is rare.

The venom of the rattlesnake causes severe local pain,
progressive swelling, hemorrhage, gangrene, and local in-
fection of the wound. After severe bites, general reactions
are hemorrhage in the internal organs, shock, vomiting,
and collapse of the circulatory system.

The venom of the coral snake acts primarily on the
nervous system. There is little local pain and no swelling.
There may be local numbness. In a few hours after severe
bites there is paralysis of speech, swallowing, eye move-
ment, and breathing.

Treatment. Following a bite by a poisonous snake, phys-
ical activity should be avoided if possible, since this ac-
celerates the absorption and dissemination of the venom.
If the bite is on an extremity, a constricting band should
be applied immediately about one inch above the bite. It
should only be tight enough to stop the venous circulation,
AND THAT IS NOT VERY TIGHT, not nearly so tight as is the
practice in the application of the tourniquet to check
arterial bleeding. It should be loosened every 15 to 20
minutes to avoid complete venous stagnation.

The fang punctures are then incised by a sharp blade
after the application of a skin antiseptic over and around
the bite. Short criss-cross or closely parallel incisions are
made about % inch long and definitely through the skin.
Light suction is then applied to the wounds. This is most
easily done with small specially designed suction cups.
If mouth suction is necessary, the mouth should be rinsed
frequently; for although swallowed venom is neutralized
by stomach juices, some absorption through cuts in the
mouth can occur. Suction from each incision should be
maintained for from 30 to 40 minutes out of each hour,
and continued in this manner for about 15 hours.

86 MOUNTAIN MEDICINE

As the swelling extends, the tourniquet should be re-
placed just beyond the advancing margin. Incisions are
made in a circular pattern about the bite and as the swell-
ing spreads, additional cuts are made around the limb so
that suction may be applied to the new areas of involve-
ment. The amount of bloody fluid obtained from the in-
cisions is small at first, but contains more concentrated
venom than do the larger amounts that appear later. Hot,
wet, common-salt or Epsom-salt compresses are applied
to the entire extremity when it is not necessary to have the
area exposed. When available, use antivenin for rattlesnake
bites. None is made for coral-snake venom.

Snake venom lowers resistance to infection; penicillin
should be taken (see p. 77) as soon as possible.

General treatment for shock is important. The tradi-
tional use of large doses of whiskey is dangerous and can
definitely be condemned. The use of potassium perman-
ganate or other chemicals has not been successful.

Mountain sickness.

Many individuals who spend most of the year near sea
level will develop mountain sickness if they ascend rapidly
to high elevations without first acclimatizing themselves.
Apparently fatigue may bring on an attack in a person
who, if he had remained quiet, would have suffered no ill
effects. The symptoms are headache, nausea often with
vomiting dizziness, feeling of illness, and weakness.
Sometimes the bowels are upset and a persistent diarrhea
occurs. The onset of symptoms may occur many days after
arrival at high altitudes, depending upon the degree of
exertion and fatigue. No particular treatment is necessary
except rest. Acclimatization occurs within a few days ; if it
does not and symptoms persist, it is best that the person
return to lower altitudes and remain there.

WATER STERILIZATION 87

It should be mentioned here that many of the normal
body functions, especially in women, are upset temporarily
by changes in altitude, and such disturbances should not
cause great concern.

Swimming

Swimmers can meet with as many accidents in the
streams and lakes of the mountains as they can in pools
and rivers at lower elevations, and should swim in com-
pliance with the safety rules practiced elsewhere. In ad-
dition, it must be remembered that one's wind is much
shorter at high altitudes, the water is colder, cramps are
more frequent, and exhaustion comes sooner. With this
in mind, don't swim out toward the center of a lake, but
swim along the shore.

Water sterilization

Fortunately the sources of streams in our wilderness
areas are usually uncontaminated, and one need not steri-
lize the drinking and cooking water. However, if one is
traveling in a semipopulated area or in a foreign country,
it is safer to take the precaution of using Halazone tablets
in the drinking water and of boiling the cooking water. One
Halazone tablet is dissolved in one quart of water and
allowed to stand thirty minutes. The iodine tablet "Bur-
soline" is considered superior to Halazone; one in one
quart of water renders it potable in fifteen minutes.

Immunization

All persons should have active immunization against
tetanus especially those handling stock. A yearly tetanus
booster just before a trip is recommended; this obviates
necessity for a booster after an injury on the trip.

9. Women

HITTING THE TRAIL is by no means a game
for men only. The doe is quite as well adapted to her en-
vironment as the stag. Women and girls can cope with
weather, bugs, bears, and topography with perfect con-
fidence and success even when they go on hen parties
without the aid of any male horse-sense or muscle at all.
What it takes is know-how, and precisely the same advice
that applies to men and boys should be assimilated by
women and girls. However, the information offered in the
other chapters of this manual can be modified and supple-
mented by a few strictly feminine items.

To begin with, test your capacity for hard exercise and
exposure on easy trips before undertaking anything too
strenuous. Do not go along with a bunch of cannonballs
whose ambitions run to great distances, great altitudes,
and burning speed, or who are setting out to conquer some
major objective, unless you know your ability to keep up.
You might thereafter be classified as a ball-and-chain.
However, when recreation and inspiration are the objec-
tives, many trips can be adapted to individual capacities
by so arranging the itinerary that those more strenuously

[88]

LOAD LIMITS 89

inclined can make side trips or go cross-country while
others stay on the trail. The social advantages of a good
mixed company may outweigh the importance of an am-
bitious itinerary.

It is very desirable to go through a schedule of physical
training before an anticipated trip, particularly if you
are going to a high altitude. This does not mean merely
one or two short hikes. It means several hikes of increasing
length carrying a pack and wearing the same shoes that
you will wear on your trip so that they will be thoroughly
tested and broken in. In addition, a regular schedule of
frequent vigorous short walks or other outdoor exercise
is highly recommended.

Your potential ability to stand such vicissitudes as heat
and cold and short rations is as good as the average man's,
and as a rock-hopper, log-balancer, and rough-trail-
scrambler, you can also compete quite favorably with
Mr. Average-Man. There is one respect, however, in which
you must allow yourself to be inferior: you can't carry
so heavy a pack. So you have got to learn to "keep it light."
This is highly desirable whether you have to carry it your-
self, or whether you can induce some burro or husband
to carry it for you, since in the one case, your back will
suffer and in the other, your reputation. The number of
pounds that a woman can carry depends so much upon
her size, muscular strength, and physical condition that
limits cannot be prescribed. The practicable load limit for
different individuals seems to vary more for women than
for men. However, 25 pounds seems to be the absolute
upper load limit for all but the extraordinarily husky
woman. The person who considers herself of average
"outdoor-girl type" strength may carry 35 pounds on
4-to-5-day trips, but the extra 10 pounds will almost cer-
tainly diminish the buoyancy and joyousness of her gait

90 WOMEN

by several hundred per cent, and, once home, she will not
undertake such a trip again except under extreme duress,

A poorly fitted pack will greatly decrease the feasible
load limit, and women are likely to handicap themselves
by borrowing men's or boys' packs when they do not
possess properly fitted packs of their own. Female backs
and shoulders differ from the male in contour and pro-
portions as well as in size. It is very desirable to acquire
a pack of one's very own, of a size to accommodate one's
own normal weight-load, and if necessary to have it altered
or shaped to suit one's own peculiarities.

It might be better to substitute for the female of the
species, in place of a clothing and equipment list, a list
of what not to take. However, this would take several
volumes and would exceed the scope of this manual. So
turn to the list of clothing and personal effects in the
chapter on equipment and if you are tempted to add any-
thing to that list, consider carefully at least three times
whether you really need it. Most women will be sorely
tempted to take more changes of clothing than they really
need. In the first place, washing and drying clothes is
normally very easy in camp. You simply wash them out
quickly when you bathe each evening provided you don't
make camp too late, and they dry very fast in the moun-
tains. In the second place, women must learn to consider
the difference between the three distinct sets of values
which underlie the modern urge to cleanliness, one being
comfort, the second hygiene, and the third being the
spit-'n-polish aesthetic standard. The second and third re-
quirements vanish when you hit the trail. The dirt you will
encounter in the wilderness is perfectly sanitary, being
rendered so by oxygen and remoteness from human habita-
tion. The spit-'n-polish aesthetic standard becomes so im-
practicable as to appear even slightly ridiculous. Aesthetic

CLOTHING 91

values will lie more in your surroundings than in your
person. There remains only the valid objective of comfort.
Clothes that have been sweat-soaked become clammy.

Women seem, in general, to be more susceptible to cold
feet than men, so have clean socks (dust is O.K., but not
perspiration) to wear on cold nights.

The clothing list in the chapter on equipment covers
most of what you need to know, but a few special com-
ments are in order. Blue jeans are widely accepted in the
West as the most practical, sturdy, cheap pant. Regular
boys' jeans are likely to be tight in the crotch and big in
the waist if you are normally endowed. Different models
vary in cut and some may fit you. If not, there are special
jeans made just like men's, but cut for women. Women's
ready-made slacks are too flimsy, but there are frontier
pants available in heavy denim that are good.

Many women are prone to chafe on the inside of the
thigh on long hikes. This can be prevented by undershorts
of soft material, and with legs that come part way down
the thigh, in place of briefs.

The biggest problem is likely to be shoes. Most hiking
boots made for women seem still to be modeled on the
lasts that were manufactured when women hiked in long
skirts or voluminous bloomers. They have knee-height
tops, pointed toes, and too much heel. If you are fortunate
enough to have a wide foot, particularly if your heel is
wide, you will be able to buy boys' shoes that will be satis-
factory. If you have a narrow foot, your problem may be
difficult indeed. Leather-top basketball shoes make good
hiking shoes if you can find them. Canvas-top shoes (above
the ankles) are much better than poorly fitted leather
shoes. If you have to buy high-top boots, have the tops
cut off above the ankle or part way up the calf. Very high
tops are hot, heavy, and unnecessary.

92 WOMEN

It is controversial whether women have more delicate
skin than men, but even if you aren't the rose-petal type,
bear in mind that strong sun and wind at high altitudes
can wreak more havoc than you may think. Be sure to have
adequate protection along for face, neck, and hands, in
the form of brimmed hat, bandanna, gloves, cold cream or
lanolin.

It goes without saying that you will not wish to tote a
very elaborate assortment of cosmetics. If your skin is not
naturally very oily, a lanolin preparation will provide the
most efficient lubrication for it. Some women find this
essential in addition to a sunburn preparation, for the
preservation of a layer or two of face. Face powder is likely
not to match after you have acquired either sunburn or tan,
and besides, it cakes with perspiration. Even though you
may shudder now at the thought of wearing a nude face,
you will probably find after you have been out a couple
of days that you like yourself best in just lipstick.

Under the heading of "strictly feminine and personal"
comes some advice regarding your menstrual period.
Whatever your individual peculiarities may be ordinarily,
they may be quite different on a mountain hiking trip.
You may be thrown off schedule and you may need lots
more or lots fewer sanitary napkins than usual. Tampons
worn internally may be more comfortable for hiking and
will prevent the chafing that may be your lot with ex-
ternally worn napkins (but for your first trip by all means
have a supply of the kind you are used to). And don't
forget, there are no rest rooms with vending machines
where you are going.

Finally, one little luxury item. If you are curvaceous,
dig a hole for your hips at night.

10. Especially for Men

[What follows was not written for a manual,
and we think much would be lost if it were rewritten for
a manual in the how-to-do-it, 1-2-3-4 style a manual has
to have if the reader is to be given a fair chance to find
the points and paragraphs he is looking for. Neverthe-
less, Elizabeth S. Cowles, one of the country's foremost
women mountaineers, long wanted to write about a sub-
ject that she felt almost evangelical about, a subject which
has important bearing upon wilderness travel, as we think
you will agree. What she finally wrote first appeared in
the Sierra Club Bulletin for June 1949. We are happy
to add it to these pages just as she wrote it, without the
cloak of the semianonymous "we" that has necessarily
been resorted to elsewhere in this book. As we say in
our title for what she herself entitled "Have You a Moun-
tain Widow in Your Home?" this is especially for men; we
should prefer that women turn immediately to page 100
and thus avoid getting any ideas which could make them
any more difficult to handle than they are. Ed.]

I REALLY HATE to set myself up as a critic of
the opposite sex. Men have always been among my best
friends, especially the mountain-climbing variety. But
there is one mistake they make so frequently that I feel
impelled to point it out.

I'll begin with a story. It isn't a true story in that I
never knew a mountaineer named Don, let alone one who
[93]

94 ESPECIALLY FOR MEN

was married to a girl named Alice. But it may illustrate
the point I want to make as well as some of the true
stories I do know. I had met Don in the Tetons, we'll say.
He attached himself to our climbing brotherhood and
we had some fine times in the hills. He did his part on
the mountain and his part in camp and added to every-
body's good time with an inexhaustible fund of vitality
and good humor. None of us thought of him as having a
wife. She wasn't around. She was back in Little Rock, it
turned out, waiting patiently for Don to come home.

Don't jump to the conclusion that Don and Alice were
unhappily married because they weren't. She was a perfect
dear and they were devoted to each other. Nor was Alice,
as you might think, the fragile type, not rugged enough
for the great outdoors. On the contrary, she had always
been something of an athlete. In fact, as Don confided to
me later, it was seeing her outplay and outlast an op-
ponent in a tennis tournament five years before that had
first bowled him over. The truth was, though I was some
time in finding it out, that Alice was just the kind of per-
son for the mountains, as Don obviously was, but some-
how they'd never succeeded in getting together about it.
Why?

It's a long story but I think I'll tell it. It all went back
to the honeymoon. Don had thought it would be fine to
take Alice climbing. There was a certain amount of un-
derstandable masculine vanity about it. He had watched
her shine on the tennis court it was going to be nice to
have her see him do his stuff on a rock wall. And that she
would take to climbing like a duck to water he hadn't the
faintest doubt. I think Don fully expected Alice to swarm
up her first chimney like a human fly !

Sad to relate, things didn't turn out quite that way.

It was a funny thing: with anyone else but his new wife

A FABLE 95

Don would probably have known better than to go at their
first undertaking as if en route to a fire. But this time he
got carried away. Since he had a well-developed set of
climbing muscles himself, it apparently never crossed his
mind that training is something a sea-level spouse acquires
slowly. Nor did it occur to him, carrying eighty pounds
himself, that a twenty-five pound pack might be a bit
heavy for a beginner. And what a shame it was about
her blisters! Those new boots should have had an easier
breaking in. (So should Alice.) Bad luck hounded them,
too, in that five days of solid rain followed their installa-
tion in camp and she caught a fearful cold. It was a hide-
ous combination of the preventable and the unpreventable,
like most human disasters. But that wasn't all.

Don made his next mistake when finally the sun came
out. He rushed Alice off to a favorite cliff of his. Lost in
his own delight at being back among the familiar cracks
and ledges, he failed entirely to notice that Alice, to whom
such maneuvers were new, was having the living daylight
scared out of her. Mind you, she behaved very well. She
was a good sport about everything and tried her darnedest
But the will-to-do, unfortunately, is not always enough.
The harder she tried the worse things got and finally her
weariness and fright were only exceeded by the appalling
depths of her sense of failure. It was quite a while before
Don, his head in the clouds, noticed how slow and unac-
countably awkward she was and that she didn't seem to
be enjoying herself at all. He was surprised at first, then
tenderly amused. But when matters failed to improve, his
feeling changed to one of very real disappointment and
chagrin. Poor Don, he had pictured it all so differently!
It never occurred to him, then or later, that there was only
one person responsible. That was himself.

Things went from bad to worse until a break for Alice

96 ESPECIALLY FOR MEN

two Dartmouth classmates turned up in their valley.
Don had one super-duper climb with them while Alice
stayed in camp. Vacations were short in those war years.
Soon our young couple were on their way back to civiliza-
tion where they took up the threads of a life that proved
to he very full and happy. But and this is the point of
the story Alice never went climbing again. And who can
blame her?

This fable illustrates an imaginary set of conditions and
those, I grant you, may be rather exaggerated. But the gen-
eral outline of the situation is so often seen as to be rela-
tively common in mountaineering circles. The climbing
widow abounds. She usually has to choose between wait-
ing around on a hotel porch day after day while himself
is off exercising in the hills or, worse still, being left out
of his vacation plans entirely. All this is a great pity. As
everyone knows or should know, the climber is at his very
best in the mountains. He is happiest, healthiest, gayest,
funniest. What a loss for people to miss this in the one
they love! Companionship is a rich part of the climbing
experience. Why impoverish married life by failing to
share it?

I claim that it needn't be so. If your spouse has the neces-
sary number of hands and feet, general good health and
plenty of affection for you, it's just a matter of patience,
imagination and a little salesmanship. I don't mean to say
that the little woman will necessarily be able to wave an
American flag beside you on the summit of K2, but the
probabilities are she'll grow to love the mountains and
share your joy in wild country if you'll only give her half
a chance. And for the rest of your lives you'll have won-
derful times in the hills together, to say nothing of the
endless fun that will be yours of planning and recalling
vacations future and past.

FIRST COMMANDMENT 97

No wands, potions or abracadabra are necessary. It's all
quite easy. You just have to obey a few simple rules when
first you introduce your lady to the mountaineering scene.

Rule one is: Don't let her get tired.

Take it easy! Gear the proceedings to her strength. Re-
sist the temptation to whip up a steep trail at a three mile
an hour clip to start with. Make it a short walk, a gentle
grade. Have a fine Aussichtspunkt (Deutsch for a place
from which you get a lovely view) an hour or so out.
Eat lunch there (and be sure to tell her how purty she
looks against the sky in that red flannel shirt! ) . Keep your
love happy and comfortable while she's gradually work-
ing up some hill-going muscles and don't forget that
it will take time. Details mustn't escape you, like seeing
that boots fit so as to spare her the painful ordeal of
blisters. Be sure she doesn't get a Charley-horse, or pick
up a terrible sunburn, or suffer unnecessary harassment
from black flies or mosquitoes. Just remember (in time)
that there are salt pills, lanolin preparations and insect
dope available at the nearest drugstore.

When you are established in camp (and you might start
her off, by the way, with a pack that is bulky for her
pride but light) do a few extras so she'll be pleasantly
surprised at how nice camping is, right from the begin-
ning. If your dear one is to be cook, why not have given
her a little chance to practice camp cookery ahead of time
so that her first meal is good and she commences her new
career with a sense of success?

That sense of success is, actually, the whole business,
the secret of everything. Never forget it for a minute! She
must always feel she's doing well, that you are pleased
with her and delighted at her progress. If she truly feels
this, she will do well, she will make progress (and you
will be delighted no make-believe about it!).

98 ESPECIALLY FOR MEN

The importance of this sense- of-success cannot be over-
emphasized. It is the sine qua non. Remember it especially
in the second commandment: Don't let her get scared.

Take the real climbing very slowly. Build up her con-
fidence with the greatest care. Try beginning with slab
walking, the way the mountain troops do. It does wonders
for the sense of balance and your lady-love will be far
less inclined to grab and cling later, when the angle in-
creases. On the first steep pitches, the going should be
really easy with lots to hold on to. Vary the terrain, of
course, and try her out on different types of assignments
to keep it interesting. But never dream of undertaking
anything at all difficult until she's entirely at home with
simple chimneys, slabs and ledges and you're dead cer-
tain she's enjoying herself. That's the vital thing to watch
out for: is she having a good time? If it continues to be
fun for her, then you're a first-rate teacher and your pupil
is bound to graduate eventually with honors.

That the advanced lessons in climbing have to be han-
dled very carefully too goes without saying. You mustn't
relax for a moment! Beginners shouldn't be asked to ac-
custom themselves to exposure on a rock face, for instance,
at the same time that they are learning to make a little go
a long way in the line of holds. One lesson at a time, my
friend. This goes too for the techniques of snow and ice
work, for training in the use of rope and ice ax, and for
the many other skills that advanced alpinism requires. If
big-league mountaineering is what you enjoy, you'll want
your wife to enjoy it too. It's all perfectly possible. But
just remember how long it took you to learn the business
and don't expect her to be a lot brighter than any one else
in the world. Time, practice, patience and affection
combine these and it will surprise you how soon your lady
begins to feel the exhilaration of the airiest maneuvers.

THIRD COMMANDMENT 99

I might throw in a few extra tips here: You be the one
that seems to be holding her back, not vice versa. It will
be fine for the general morale. Praise her endlessly. It's
wonderful what a compliment does to hearten us girls.
And by all you hold dear, do NOT condescend! All will
be lost if you sound like Paderewski instructing a first-
year student of limited talent.

Now let's go on to commandment three: It is: Don't let
her get bored.

Set yourself to making camping and climbing a de-
lightful experience. It's poor judgment to stick out a seven-
day rain, for instance how much brighter it would be to
take your girl-friend back to the valley where she could
get a hot bath and go to the movies for a change. Vary
your schedule: don't always be exercising wildly. Have
frequent days off. Bring some good books along (the little
paper-covered ones don't weigh very much) and read
aloud. Introduce her to mountain photography, or learn
about alpine flowers together, or see what the two of you
can find out from one of the tiny bird handbooks and a
pair of field glasses. A one-track mind in the hills is a
fearful mistake. The mountain experience is rich investi-
gate some of the many and varied fields of interest it offers.
You never know what may capture her fancy and yours.

All this is likely to take some self-discipline to start
with and you probably won't achieve many fancy ascents
that first year but I'll be willing to bet a substantial
amount that you'll end by considering it one of the best
investments you ever made. You'll reap rich rewards; so
will she!

So far my remarks have been directed toward the
mountaineering man who for some reason has failed to
condition his wife in favor of his beloved sport. But now
I'd like to put in a brief word to the climbing widow

100 ESPECIALLY FOR MEN

the one who stays home while her husband is off galli-
vanting in the Canadian Rockies and who perhaps feels a
little sorry for herself at times. Madam, it is not too late
that is, if you want to do something about it.

The following story is short, it also happens to be true.
It concerns my own sister. In the early years of their
married life, her husband used to roar up steep trails a
mile a minute en route to the high peaks. Emmy followed,
usually in tears. Obviously Emmy wasn't destined to be
God's Gift to Alpinism, and so Mac took to going off on
climbing vacations by himself or with a like-minded pal.
But that was a long time ago. Things are different these
days. He still goes back to the hills whenever a busy law
practice permits but now Emmy goes along. Her alpine
aptitudes haven't changed any. She has, however, become
a strong trail and rough-country walker and loves it.
What's more, she's the best camp cook north of the Mason-
Dixon line. Lucky the climbers that start upward fortified
by Emmy's marvelous menus! Emmy cut her coat to suit
her cloth. She looked the facts in the eye and then worked
out her own personal answer. She knew what she wanted,
and what she wanted was to go along. So: she made her-
self essential in the pattern. You couldn't make Mac go to
the mountains without her. And she has a wonderful time.

One more thing occurs to me before closing. If you are
a high-altitude parent who would like your youngsters to
enjoy climbing: what I've written applies to children just
as much as it does to wives. See that they have a good
time in the hills, and take pains to adjust the schedule
and tempo to their strength and abilities. Give them from
the very beginning a sense of success and approval and
you'll find you have a bunch of climbing maniacs in your
family. They'll be at you all the time to take them into
the mountains. What a Utopia that would be!

11. Children

WHAT ABOUT you trail enthusiasts who have
acquired small fry? Do you think you are condemned to
remain within toddling distance of a summer cabin or
automobile? Experience has proved that this is not neces-
sary. Short hiking trips, burro trips of moderate propor-
tions, or excursions from a high country base camp are
quite practicable provided itineraries are scaled down and
other arrangements geared to meet the needs of the fam-
ily. We say family rather than children because if your trip
is too ambitious, it may be the parents who feel the strain
first. The endurance or at least the resilience of healthy
children may amaze you, and moreover, they enjoy ad-
vantages such as the absence of any aversion toward dirt
or nudity which minimize nervous strain. The parents
on the other hand have the responsibility of caring for
the children minus the conveniences of home. Therefore,
we advise you not to undertake the kind of itinerary that
even the less zealous adult party would follow. Think as
little as possible of long-range objectives beyond the avail-
ability of good campsites and feed for the animals, and

[101]

102 CHILDREN

try instead to recapture childish joy in aimless wandering
and delight in all the wonders of the trail, great and small,
from the loveliest, longest vista down to the queerest bug
or the smallest flower. Go far enough into the wilderness to
be free of intrusion by the civilized rabble and wander
about sufficiently to enjoy fine changes of scenery and
campsites. Beyond that, take it easy.

Child psychologists in recent years have been advanc-
ing ideas which may startle some city dwellers, though
they seem only reasonable to wilderness lovers. For ex-
ample, they suggest that it is very important for children
to have the opportunity to live through some of the more
primitive experiences of their earlier ancestors in contact
with the elements and natural forces if their personalities
are to develop fully and wholesomely. It is not our prov-
ince to delve into psychological theory, but surely it is
no more than the right of a child to be afforded some
escape from the sheltered and mechanized existence im-
posed upon him by modern urban life, with its unnatural
emphasis upon respect for man-made material property.
So, consider the possibility that in taking your children
on wilderness trips you may be affording them very posi-
tive benefits as well as affording yourselves the opportunity
to enjoy your accustomed recreation.

The concern expressed above about the strain upon
the parents should not overshadow all concern on behalf
of the children. We do not believe that preschool-age
children are likely to overdo seriously so long as they
are given normal opportunity for rest and refreshment.
However, their spirits will be kept up and irritability down
and everyone's morale the better if rest and refreshment
periods are adapted to their needs and inclinations rather
than to a prearranged itinerary or to other considerations
such as the fishing or the view. It should be borne in mind

OVEREXERTION 103

that children pour out great stores of energy in play and
run-about activity as well as on the trail and they rest
when they are tired and not because there is a long climb
ahead. Older children, on the other hand, who have de-
veloped ambitions to perform feats of endurance such as
the scaling of high mountains in conscious competition
with their elders, are sometimes capable of really harm-
ful overexertion and some restraint may have to be put
upon them. This will depend upon the child's physical
health and preconditioning, upon his rivalry among mem-
bers of the group in the performance of mountaineering
feats or in the prestige attached to such performances
which might prod the youngster into efforts too heroic
for his years. Of course, these admonitions apply par-
ticularly at high altitudes.

A good plan if children are small is to move camp only
in the mornings and eat lunch at the new campsite. Then
settle down for a leisurely afternoon, and children can
take naps if they will.

A small child riding on his father's back (see below)
as a rule cannot ride happily for more than 2 hours with-
out a break.

The optimum age for introducing a child to the rigors
of camping will depend upon the eagerness of the parents
and perhaps upon the temperament of the child. We know
of an infant of 6 months and a child of 18 months who
became campers apparently with satisfaction to all con-
cerned. We also know of another who began at 17 months,
but quite frankly we would not wish to repeat that tour
de force. He is a restless, very active youngster, and the
energies of 4 adults were largely absorbed in keeping
track of him. Every time he was put upon the ground he
toddled headlong away from camp, it seemed in all direc-
tions at once, and rarely returned without being dragged

104 CHILDREN

or carried. He climBed logs and boulders from which he
might have fallen and broken his skull, vanished from
sight in foxholes and became entangled in thickets. Tor-
rential rivers and precipitous cliffs held a lethal attraction
for him. Therefore, we would prefer to initiate a child
after he became subject to some degree of verbal guidance
and could be called back to camp or away from danger.

Avoid rattlesnake country if possible and take maximum
precautions against snake bite. The consequences of snake
bite can be much more serious to a child than to an adult.
A dose of poison goes farther in a small body than in a
large one, and children are more likely to be bitten about
the body or face which is far more serious and difficult to
treat than bites on a limb.

Most children nowadays who are under routine medical
care are inoculated for tetanus. They should be inoculated
or given a booster before your trip.

There are other risks involved in leaving civilization,
such as the absence of medical care in case of sickness.
However, there are compensations such as the absence of
civilized contamination often the cause of sickness.

The grub list may be modified somewhat, though most
items on typical camp grub lists are suitable for children
beyond the infant diet stage. We have known children to
drink milk made of milk powder in enormous quantities
and without the slightest objection. Others have refused
it during an entire trip, but have perhaps made up for it
by eating large quantities of whole-milk cheese which
provided essentially the same nutrients. Canned custards
and packaged puddings can help make up the milk require-
ments. A child who dislikes powdered milk may find hot
chocolate or "chocolate milk shake," quickly made with
instant cocoa powder, acceptable. For a very small child,
the canned pureed baby foods are convenient to use and

CLOTHING 105

have the advantage of being a familiar form of food to the
child, so we believe they should be taken even though the
regular grub lists advise against much canned food on
account of its weight. Frequent snacks are fine "pick-me-
ups" for children who are leading a more than usually
strenuous life. Many children exhibit less fatigue and bet-
ter spirits if substantial food, including such solid items
as meat and cheese, is always available to them upon the
slightest whim of appetite, though never urged upon them.

Special equipment will depend upon the age and individ-
ual. But we can make some general comments.

Some children, like some adults, will require more pro-
tection against sun, heat, and cold than others. In general,
remember that their skins are young and relatively tender
and that they have less sense about protecting themselves
than do adults (though there are adults who are excep-
tions to this statement) . So, if in doubt about your child's
requirements, err on the side of too much protection in the
form of warm clothing, hats with wide brims, sunburn
preventive, etc. Some agent such as calamine lotion to treat
and prevent chafing may be helpful.

We know of no commercial source of children's sleep-
ing bags. A child's-size bag is desirable to save weight,
but is not necessary as children can use ordinary sleeping
bags, preferably the narrow mummy-case type. A child's
bag can be homemade from inexpensive lightweight sheet
blankets, folded and filled with wool bat. Stitch or tie the
wool at intervals to insure even distribution. Then cut a
modified mummy case to size, not too snug as most chil-
dren resent being closely confined, cut an opening in front
for the head and insert a zipper. Such a bag is washable.

Plenty of mosquito netting to cover the children both
waking and sleeping is important and is better than mos-
quito dope (too easily rubbed into the eyes).

106 CHILDREN

A harness with leash in which to strap and hold a small
child may give great aid and comfort to a mother when
a trail traverses the brink of a precipice or the bank of a
roaring river.

In addition to standard equipment, it will be wise with
preschool-age children to take along some portions of the
home environment whose value is purely emotional, even
at the expense of inconvenience and irreparable damage to
the articles; these might be, for example, teddy bears, toys,
books, familiar clothes, or eating utensils. We know of
one child who, at the age of a year and a half, took among
other things his favorite blanket, which happened to be
an angelic shade of pink, and as soft and fluffy as a cloud.
That was before the trip. During the trip, it was used day
and night, as a cocoon, as a tarpaulin, a towel, a rug, a
toga, a ball, and a rag. It became grimy, faded, dirty, gray,
and as compact and hard as canvas, but the emotional
comfort it provided during an otherwise total change in
material environment was well worth the sacrifice of a very
beautiful blanket. Incidentally it was apparently just as
comforting even in the latest stages of its metamorphosis
as it was in the beginning.

There are two modes of transportation for children too
*oung to walk far, namely, father and burro. The younger
ones can be carried on their fathers' backs beginning at
the age of about 18 months and until they are too heavy
to carry or until they are old enough to be trusted on
donkey back. One baby of 6 months was transported in a
basket fastened as a kyack to a burro's pack saddle.

A saddle for riding a father can be made by cutting
leg-holes in the corners of a small rucksack (with frame) .
The stitches in the seams can be cut without cutting the
material. Or a child's car seat, preferably with tray, can
be mounted on a rucksack frame. Either of these rigs pro-

RIDING

107

vides a head rest so that the child can sleep with father
providing the cradle motion. Clever fathers may invent
other devices.

An older child can ride on top of a donkey packed with
pack saddle and kyacks but with the top pack omitted and
a burlap pad between the child and the pack ropes. At
the age of 5 or 6 he can ride on a saddle. At 8 or 10 he can
walk much of the time, but a riding donkey should be
available so that he can rest his legs from time to time.
One child at the age of 4 rode behind the saddle on a large
donkey his mother was riding, "holding onto Mother's
balance" as he described it.

Anything else we can think of to suggest would come
under the heading of hints to parents at home or any-
where, and for such advice we refer you to higher author-
ity than ours. (And this even though the contributors have
twenty-six children.) So now if you decide to make parent-
hood a rugged trail instead of a plush-lined job, more
power to you, and may you and the children be the richer
for it.

12. Burro Trips

WHY USE PACK ANIMALS? The answer to this is
clear to those who cannot carry even the moderate loads
required of the backpacker, or to those who prefer a more
varied ration and more comforts than a backpacker dare
include in his critical pack. For these people there would
be no trip if it were not an animal pack trip. Other reasons
are less impelling, but should not be overlooked by those
who have never tried pack animals. Each method of moun-
tain travel has disadvantages which are peculiar to itself,
and each has rewards which are distinctive. A pack trip
not only frees the backpacker of his burden, but also
offers many new pleasures of its own.

The donkey is the most desirable beast of burden for the
novice, and remains the favorite of many experienced
campers. In the West this animal is known by his more
colorful Spanish name, "burro." The burro is small and
gentle, yet strong and dependable. No pack animal excells
him for surefootedness, or matches him for character. He
can be packed by school children, but invariably taxes the
ingenuity of the adult. No one who is healthy enough and
old enough and young enough to go into the mountains at
all is barred from a burro trip. It is the trip for the family.
It is the trip for the fisherman, or artist, or botanist who

[108]

PERSONNEL AND STOCK 109

has too much gear to carry on his own back. It is also the
trip for anyone who wishes to learn to handle pack ani-
mals, and the importance of the lesson should not be over-
looked by any devotee of the backpack. Having practiced
on the small and patient burro, a man can handle the faster
mule. If he prefers to let a horse watch the trail and walk
in the mule's dust, he can ride. Rock climbers and hunters
can use pack animals to establish a base camp which will
serve as a center for extended operations. A type of trip
which has been called cache-and-carry consists of over-
night, or three-day backpack excursions from a succession
of base camps, stocked by pack-animal transport. Indeed,
the camper who can both hike and pack, can invent many
combinations of his own.

Familiarity with the subject matter of the preceding
chapters should guarantee the efficiency, safety, and satis-
faction of backpack trips. It is the purpose of this chapter
to make the few additions and modifications necessary to
include the essentials of planning and conducting trips
with pack animals.

Personnel and stock

Little prior planning is needed before backpackers can
hit the trail. More preparation is advisable before a pack
train leaves the corral. What will be the starting point?
That may depend upon the availability of pack stock. How
many animals will be reserved? To answer this question
the pack load must he known, and this in turn depends
upon food and equipment lists. These are determined by
the length of the trip and the size of the party.

Only those who can carry a pack are invited on a back-
pack trip. In making up your burro-trip party, select
those friends who will lend a hand with the burro manage-
ment. It is a mistake to relegate all the packing to one or

110 BURRO TRIPS

two men. The stronger backs should lift the loads onto
the saddles, but women can pack as well as men, and the
youngsters can coil ropes and lead the animals on the trail.

To determine the number of animals needed, the ap-
proximate pack load must be calculated. The number of
pounds of food to be provided can be determined before
actual purchases are made. If the menu will be that of the
backpacker, 2*4 pounds per man day is a reliable figure;
if it is to include more canned goods, and perhaps a few
fresh foods for special treats, 2% pounds per man day is
a better estimate. The weight of personal and community
equipment can be determined in advance by examining
the stuff in the family camp closet in the light of the lists
in the appendix and the discussion below. Allow for a little
extra cooking equipment for the more elaborate cuisine,
and do not underestimate. Add these weights and point off
two decimal places to determine the number of burros re-
quired. The stock requirement for a ten-day trip can be
approximated by dividing the number of people by two,
and then taking the nearest larger number of whole burros.
These figures are based upon a 100-pound pay load per
burro, which is maximum. Large donkeys can carry a little
more if well packed, but many are too small or too old or
too tired to carry this much.

It is very difficult to keep more than ten burros together
on the trail. Fewer animals will serve the needs of nearly
every private party, and those who are able to take trips
of more than two weeks' duration should consider the
possibility of touching civilization at some point to restock
provisions. If four men will each carry 25 pounds at the
start of the trip, one animal can be saved, and the back-
packs will reduce rapidly as food is eaten.

Having determined the number of animals needed, you
are ready to order stock. Some packers do not keep bur-

FOOD AND EQUIPMENT 111

ros because there is more demand for mules, and it is
difficult to keep burros with the larger animals. The avail-
able donks may be spoken for early in the season; there-
fore you should make reservations well in advance. If
your friends cannot advise you, write to the Park Service
or Forest Service and ask for the names and addresses of
the packers in the general area of your preference who
handle burros. Before making final arrangements with a
packer, be sure that he knows just what pack equipment
he is expected to supply.

Food and equipment

Campers who use pack animals seldom restrict them-
selves to the bill-of-fare of the backpacker, or to his
abridged equipment list. Why should they? However, a
pack trip should still be a go-light trip, and before prepar-
ing elaborate menus and an extensive wardrobe you will
do well to consider the price, and be sure that you want to
drag civilization along with you on what was to have been
a camping trip. Additional weight means more burros to
be found in the morning, to be loaded and unloaded, and
to kick up dust along the trail. That extra pair of pants
you are considering would always be at the bottom of your
dunnage bag when you wanted them, and would be an-
other item for you to wash, and to pack and unpack daily.
Each camper will want to decide for himself what he con-
siders to be a reasonable compromise between necessity
and luxury. A few necessities peculiar to pack trips, and
several of the luxuries found to be favorites, are pointed
out here.

Canned goods are too heavy to be packed in quantity,
but a few canned items will break the monotony of rice
and spaghetti. Sweetened condensed milk makes several
tasty confections, a can of your favorite vegetable may be

112 BURRO TRIPS

hoarded for a special occasion, sweet pickles add variety
to dry lunches, and jam mixed with snow makes a refresh-
ing sherbet on a climb.

Take a reflecting oven, and plan to do a lot of baking.
The ingredients are light and the culinary possibilities
are many. Hot buttered biscuits go well in the morning,
and how would baked trout do for a change? For the eve-
ning meal, why not try cinnamon rolls? or nut cake with
chocolate frosting? or an apple cobbler? Build a hot fire
against a vertical rock, and prepare a level place for the
oven, fairly close to the coals. Keep the reflecting surfaces
of the oven shiny and clean. The oven will last longer if it
is packed between pieces of plywood held in place by
canvas straps.

In selecting personal equipment you have more freedom
than the backpacker, but only a few departures from his
list are desirable. He considered taking an extra pair of
light-weight shoes to wear in camp and probably decided
against it; you decide to include them. You can take more
moving picture film, and a %^ en g t ' 1 ^ mattress. The
backpacker could not decide whether to take a one-man
tent or a poncho, so he flipped a coin. You cannot decide
either, so you take both. Work gloves are handy about the
fire.

Your personal equipment will probably weigh between
18 and 25 pounds and should be packed in a cylindrical
dunnage bag. Bulky dunnage is not suitable for burro
loads ; therefore bags should not be more than 3 feet long
and 15 inches in diameter. If your dunnage should be
more bulky, or if it should weigh more than 25 pounds,
pack it in two dunnage bags, or roll your sleeping bag as
a separate bundle. You will want to carry a light knap-
sack so that your lunch, camera, parka, and band-aids will
be readily accessible during the day.

SPECIAL EQUIPMENT 113

In addition to the usual thongs and pliers, the tool kit
should include large split rivets with washers, and some
short lengths of leather strap for repairing harness. A coil
of light wire and a small can of casein furniture glue are
invaluable for repairing a broken saddle. A screwdriver,
a tack hammer, and a little box of assorted screws and nails
may be useful. Throw in a couple of ax wedges, an extra
buckle, and a swivel. A shoemaker's hand awl is excellent
for mending torn pack covers, cinches, and canvas kyacks.
Fishing line serves as thread. A 50-pound spring scale is
convenient for balancing the pairs of kyacks in the morn-
ing.

An ax and shovel are useful on pack trips. The ax should
have a 26-inch handle and a 2-pound head; the shovel, a
36-inch handle and an 8-inch blade. To render the ax a less
formidable weapon, provide a leather ax-head cover.

Your own first-aid materials will be those of any other
camper, but to the list in the appendix add some boric acid
powder to provide for your burros. (See below.)

The packer will furnish all pack equipment, but it is
well to know what this should include so that you can
check it over and see that it is all there, and is in good
condition. A packer will usually exchange faulty equip-
ment for a camper who knows what he wants. Each burro
should have a halter, a lead rope, a saddle and saddle
blanket, two kyacks, a pack cover, and a pack rope. In
addition, the pack train should have one or two curry
combs, and several bells.

Halters must fit snugly. Lead ropes should not be frayed,
and should have snap-swivels for attachment to the halter
ring. It would be too much to ask for clean saddle blan-
kets, but at least they should not be matted hard, or full of
holes. Good blankets are essential for sound backs.

Many good kinds of saddles and harnesses have been

114 BURRO TRIPS

developed! for pack animals. The wooden cross-tree or saw-
buck pack saddle may not be the best, but it is good, and
is standard equipment in this country. Cinches should be
broad, clean, and strong. Two cinches are preferable to
one; however the rear cinch is not essential and is not
always supplied. The saddle is usually provided with a
breast strap, as figured on page 108, but a few packers
do not supply them because they claim that a breast strap
which is tight enough to do any good cuts the animal's
wind. This is not quite true. It will cut the wind if the
saddle slips back, but in this event the animal should be
repacked at once. When the saddle is in place, the breast
strap helps to keep it there without discomfort to the
animal.

The harness which goes around the animal's hind quar-
ters is the breech. It is required to keep the pack from
slipping forward. The breech strap should be broad, and
the smaller straps which hold it in place should be strong
and adjustable.

The kyacks containers which hang from the saddle
may be made of canvas or of plywood. The latter are
called box kyacks and are just large enough to hold two
five gallon oil cans standing side by side. (Such a can
makes a fine water bucket if the top is cut out and a han-
dle provided.) Most people prefer box kyacks to the more
flimsy canvas ones because they are easier to pack; how-
ever, both are satisfactory and one or two pairs of canvas
kyacks are convenient for bulky dunnage. Kyacks are sus-
pended from the cross-trees of the saddle by loops (or
ears) of leather or rope, which should preferably be ad-
justable.

The pack rope should be at least 30 feet long. Braided
cotton ropes do not kink and are soft to handle when dry,
but twisted ropes are stronger and more durable. Pack

ITINERARY 115

covers are canvas tarpaulins, 5x5 feet, or larger. They
are more useful in camp if free of holes, and waterproof.

Itinerary

Do not prepare a detailed itinerary in advance; wait
and see where the fish are biting, what the weather is like,
and how your legs feel. On the other hand do not deny
yourself the pleasure of poring over a topographic map
to become familiar with place names, and to figure out
several desirable alternative routes. Plan to make a loop
if you can, so that you will not need to retrace any steps.
A burro train can often be taken cross country between
two trail nets if the going is not excessively rough ; how-
ever, the route should be reconnoitered in advance. You
will average 8 or 10 miles a day, and should not count on
doing more than 12 miles any day, although it is possible
to with light loads and an early start. Plan on short hauls
for the first few days, and allow time for layover days
at the more scenic camps.

To the requisites of a good campsite outlined in an
earlier chapter, be sure to add adequate feed for your
animals. If firewood is scarce at a desirable campsite use
the burros to haul in a good supply.

Before heading up the trail, you will want to call on the
district ranger. It is to your advantage that he know where
you are going, and you will have many questions to ask.
Which passes are open? Are slides, high water, or wind-
falls obstructing any trails? Is there poison feed along
your proposed route? And do not forget a fire permit.

Daily routine

Hit the trail early; the morning is the time to travel.
Even the cooks can pack their personal dunnage before
breakfast if they take turns at the stirring spoon, and as

116 BURRO TRIPS

the cocoa heats, appetites will be sharpened if kyacks are
weighed and cans flattened. One person sets out the lunch
materials so that all can stow them away into bandannas
or pockets, between helpings of mush. A crew goes after
the animals as soon as the last trout has been reduced to
a skeleton, and those remaining in camp wash dishes, stack
the pots, fold the ovens, thoroughly drown the fires, cover
the garbage pit, and prepare everything for packing as
soon as the burros arrive.

You will probably enjoy taking rather long noon halts
when the schedule permits. The warm mid-day sun in-
vites relaxation, and there should be no reason to hurry
down the trail again while chewing the last bite of lunch.
A quick dip in the river before eating will shorten the
miles ahead, and this is a good time for a sun bath. The
preparation of lunches in the morning makes it unneces-
sary to unpack kyacks, and the animals are quickly cared
for as described in the next chapter.

Avoid late camps. It is no fun doing the dishes in the
dark, and there should be time before supper to bathe
and wash clothes, or to fish. When the dishes are washed,
pack covers are spread over the kyacks to protect their
loads from moisture, and to discourage the little white-
footed mouse who loves to nibble holes in food sacks.

There are other animals which are potentially more
dangerous to food and equipment than mice. The burros
themselves can clean you out of breakfast cereals in short
order, and will do so if given the chance. Deer seldom rob
the larder, but they are ravenous for salt, and will chew
the back out of a shirt, or carry off burro halters for the
perspiration they contain. For some reason deer also like
soap ! In national parks they are often very persistent and
difficult to keep away. The bear is the most famous, but in
usual experience the least damaging, night marauder.

DAILY ROUTINE 117

Bears are not common above 8,000 feet, but they often
investigate camps. When in bear country, put plates and
cups on top of the pack covers which are covering the
kyacks. If you hear a clatter during the night, collect your
wits for a moment, and then suddenly jump up, turn on
your flashlight, shout, and throw a pine cone at the re-
treating (you hope) robber. A bear is not to be fooled
with at close range, but this method has worked many
times, and the culprits seldom return for a second treat-
ment. This method can also very effectively startle any
member of your party who stumbles into it.

Pack animals add many routine jobs to the daily
schedule. You will find that most of these chores are fun,
but you can increase your pleasure in doing them by striv-
ing constantly to increase your skill. If the party divides
itself into teams to pack the burros, have each team criti-
cize the jobs done by the others. Time yourselves making
and breaking camp, and be on the lookout for shortcuts
and improvements in technique. Since you have more
equipment than the backpacker, your camp should be
more orderly. You cannot get along if a pack rope is lost,
but there is no danger of losing it if it is always kept in
the appointed place. Before leaving a campsite, look for
any article of equipment which may have been overlooked
in packing, check the area for papers which should have
been burned, be sure the garbage pit is well covered (and
uninviting to bears) , and that the fire bed is cool. It is a
regrettable fact that it is possible to leave many favorite
campsites cleaner than you find them. If you will carry
your burned and flattened cans out with you thus avoid-
ing the need of a garbage pit for unburnables you'll be
one of the best friends of the wilderness.

13. Burro Management

BURRO MANAGEMENT is the uncertain science of
getting a burro to do what one wants him to do. Now if
he were a frail animal he might be forced into submission
by strong-arm methods; but he is stronger than a man.
If he were a beast of no individuality, he might do his
packer's bidding without question; but he is quite opin-
ionated about a number of things. How, then, can one
hope to manage him? The answer is simple, he can be
managed by any camper who is more intelligent than he.
Are you? Face the question squarely.

If so, then instead of waging constant war against him,
you solicit his cooperation. A burro is more responsive
than a mule and will be quick to detect and return friend-
ship ; the bray of affection with which he greets his packer
in the morning is as heartwarming as it is ear-rending.
The camper should realize that his beast of burden is work-
ing hard for him, doing a job he could not do himself.
Certainly the animal deserves to be well packed, well fed,
and well rested. He may become angry or resentful but
he is not irrevocably mean; if you find him ornery, you
have his previous handler to thank. Realize that he does
certain things in certain ways because he is pure burro.
It is nevertheless important that the animal know who is

[118]

FINDING THEM 119

in charge. Do not give in to him on important disciplinary
matters. He will object at first but will respect your
strength of character and admire you secretly. An attitude
of firmness, coupled with consideration, is of paramount
importance as a background for good burro management;
the rest is technique and experience.

The technique is not difficult to learn and with surpris-
ingly little experience the novice becomes an expert packer,
confident of his ability to cope with any problem the next
turn in the trail may present and deriving much real satis-
faction from his mastery of a new skill.

Finding them in the morning

Let us consider the tricks of getting a burro to do what
we want him to do by talking ourselves through a typical
day, considering the problems as they come. If the animals
were picketed last night, we know just where to look for
them. If they were turned loose, finding them becomes
the first problem of the day. Some campers never got be-
yond this first problem, but such a fate should seldom
be blamed entirely on bad luck. It never pays merely to
wander about listening for burro bells. After breakfast
all members of the party except dishwashers join forces
for a coordinated, calculated search. There are two meth-
ods: one is to start at camp and track the animals; the
other, which may be faster but which is less reliable, is to
guess where they are and go directly there. It is usually
well to do both these things at once. Spread out and go
where you would have gone if you were burros, but keep
a sharp lookout for tracks in case your imagination is
not qidf. up to it. The burros did not go to a near-by
meadow of tall lush grass, because they prefer the bunch-
grass which grows on higher ground. They spent the first
part of the night finding and eating such grass. When

120 BURRO MANAGEMENT

appetites were satisfied, they probably just stood still. Bells
may even now be quiet. In the early morning they may
have climbed the west wall of the canyon to meet the sun
as it descended the slopes. When they reached it, they
probably stood again and warmed themselves. If you were
slow at breakfast, they are again moving on and feeding.
Wherever they are, you may expect to find them together
unless there is reason to suppose that certain of the animals
have developed friendships bordering on love. Half an
hour will usually serve to find your stock.

If there are two or three burros, it is best to lead
them back to camp with the lead ropes which you have
brought with you. If there are more animals and few
hands it may be preferable to drive them. They will be
easier to catch upon arrival in camp if they are not un-
necessarily excited. They are frisky in the morning and
may run down the trail, but this should not be encouraged,
and one should avoid swinging ropes and shouting. Party
members left in camp have learned to spread out across
the trail when they hear the bells so that the animals wiD
not go on past camp. The next problem is to catch them.

Catching them

Your burros may be so friendly that you have trouble
keeping them out of your lunch pocket, or, on the other
hand, they may be very difficult to approach. Catch the
gentle ones first and then go after that suspicious crea-
ture who seems to be paying little attention to the good
example set by the others. If several campers stand about
the recalcitrant beast at various places it will help by form-
ing a mental corral. Do not carry a rope. Hold one hand
out and talk to the animal quietly. Mother Goose will do
if you cannot think of anything more appropriate. Ap-
proach very slowly. Pretend that you do not care much

TYING THEM UP 121

whether you catch him or not. If the burro bolts the cir-
cle, do not run after him but start the process all over.
If he thinks this is fun, wait until the other burros have
been saddled and he may decide the game is done. As a
last resort, put a level teaspoon of quick oats in the palm
of your hand and do it all again. When your arm is around
the animal's neck, an assistant comes up slowly with a
lead rope, and a halter, if the burro is not already wearing
one. He will be easier to catch in another day or two.

Tying them up

Even the gentlest burro must be tied before packing
operations begin. He might stand still for nine mornings
but on the tenth he may suddenly give in to an impelling
urge to run just as the load is about to be secured. We
have seen campers stand with pack rope in hand watch-
ing the pack cover sail into the fire place, the eating
utensils ricochet through a willow thicket, and the flour
sack explode on a distant rock as the burro disappears
over the horizon.

Tie them to small, stout trees near the dunnage, and
not too close to each other. The lead rope is secured to the
tree at least waist high, and the rope should be short. This
discourages the burro from walking round and round the
tree as you follow with the saddle and prevents him from
stepping over the rope or becoming tangled in rocks or
brush.

This brings us to the subject of knots which calls for
a short digression. Every camper should know the fol-
lowing knots: square knot, bowline, sheet bend, clove
hitch, and two half hitches. Packers must also know the
girth hitch. These are enough for every-day needs. Old
hands wilt also find uses for the hitching tie, magnus hitch,
eye splice, short splice, timber hitch, and others which may

Box HITCH

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sid

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GROOMING 125

be found in any book of handcraft. We find other people's
written directions for knot tying as illuminating as an ac-
count of the mechanics of an adding machine, so we are
offering only diagrams. One should practice until the
essential knots can be tied quickly and easily and should
learn the characteristics and uses of each. The square knot
is the knot usually used for joining two ropes together
and for bandaging. The bowline is used for making a
loop which will not slip. The sheet bend, like the square
knot, is used for joining two ropes particularly when
they are of different sizes, but unlike the square knot it
can be untied easily after it has been under strain. The
clove hitch will not slip up or down a smooth pole or stick.
Two half hitches can be tied in a rope which is under
strain and is usually good for tying a lead rope to that
certain small tree standing alone on level ground which
brings us back to that subject again.

Grooming

The burro is now ready for grooming, an important step
which is too often overlooked. His back should get a good
working over with a curry comb to remove dirt, salt, and
sand. The legs should be kept free of caked mud, but other-
wise little additional grooming is needed.

Until you learn which animals are appreciative and you
have established a mutual understanding with any others,
it is well to remember that one end may bite and the other
end may kick. The bite is most often a feint and seldom
more than a nip; the kick is not as damaging as a mule
kick, but it is foolish to take chances. To keep posted on
the disposition of a particular horse, mule, or burro, one
should keep an eye on his ears. He will take no aggressive
action with malice aforethought without turning his ears
back along his neck farther back than when just listen-

126 BURRO MANAGEMENT

ing to the rear. The first time he nips at you is the test.
Thump him solidly in the ribs and talk to him. Billings-
gate is better than Mother Goose this time. This establishes
that mutual understanding we spoke of and he probably
will not trouble you again.

If there is a saddle or cinch sore, every eff ort must be
made to avoid further irritation. The harness may require
adjustment. The load should be redistributed among the
sound animals if possible. Remove dirt with a clean rag,
avoid excessive dust and prevent the animal from rolling.
Clean soft saddle blankets are desirable for prevention as
well as for cure. Dirty ones may be rinsed out on layover
days with great benefit to the animals' backs. There are
saddle-sore creams and greases on the market and many
packers have their own formulas. Most of these sound like
witches' brews. You might carry a little boric acid powder
to sprinkle on sores. This is a mild antiseptic and helps
dry up open wounds. Clean air and sunshine are best.
Good packers do not treat sores ; they prevent them.

Saddling

Saddling and packing are done from the near (left)
side of the animal. It is a good idea to work in pairs, but
the off-side packer acts only as an assistant, doing the
things which cannot be done on the near side. The animal
has learned to expect this, and the routine helps the pack-
ers also. Make sure the saddle blanket is free of wrinkles
and burrs. Place it too far forward and slide it back into
position so that the animal's hair will lie smooth. The
front margin comes to the center of the withers. Some
burros have a convenient dark stripe at this point to guide
the novice. If the blanket is too far to one side it will creep
out from under the saddle during the morning. Stand be-
hind the burro not too close and check.

SADDLING 127

Swashbuckling cowboys like to throw on the saddle so
that the cinches slap the animal in the belly. This is bad
practice for any packer and is very bad practice for the
beginner. Lift the cinch back over the saddle to get it
out of the way and then place the saddle on the animal's
back. It fits in the hollows just behind the withers not
too far back. Push the cinch down the off side, buckle
the breast strap, if the saddle has one, and drop the
breech harness over the animal's well, breech. The sad-
dle blanket should extend forward at least two and a half
inches beyond the saddle where the latter rests on the back.
This is important. Now grasp the saddle blanket front and
back along the animal's ridge pole and lift an inch or so ;
this makes a tunnel of air under the blanket in the mid-
line which provides ventilation and prevents the load from
rubbing along the backbone.

The long strap used to secure the cinch is called the
latigo. The off -side packer pushes the cinch under the belly
to the near-side packer, who passes the latigo through the
cinch ring from inside out and then continues through the
ring on the saddle rigging from outside in. This is re-
peated to give two complete loops with the latigo, the sec-
ond loop being over the first, in the rings, rather than be-
side it. The forward edge of the cinch must be not less
than three inches from the front leg when the animal
stands straight so that it will not pinch when he walks.
Cinch sores behind the leg are very difficult to heal. The
loops made with the latigo provide enough friction to hold
as the cinch is tightened. In anticipation of this event, the
burro has spread his legs and lowered his head. His lip is
dangling and he is looking as sullen as he can. Most im-
portant, he may have taken an enormous breath which
he does not plan to exhale until you think that the cinch
is tight. Pay no attention to this. Put the left hand against

128 BURRO MANAGEMENT

the body of the animal beside the cinch ring to prevent
the skin from wrinkling. With the right hand, grasp the
outside loop of the latigo between the two rings and give
several good hard pulls. Secure the latigo with the girth
hitch. The poor burro is now moaning and grunting and
eyeing you reproachfully, but never mind, in two minutes
the cinch will be hanging free. Saddle another burro and
then come back in a casual sort of way, humming a little
tune, and quickly tighten the cinch again before the beast
can inflate. This time test it by passing the fingers under
the cinch from back to front. They should go all the way
under but with some difficulty. When the fingers are with-
drawn they smooth the hair.

If there is a rear cinch, it is placed after the front cinch.
It goes just behind the "equator," and must not be so
tight as the front cinch. If it is too tight, the animal can-
not breathe well. There should be a strap between the
breeching and the rear cinch to be snapped in place. When
pulling the animal's tail out from under the breech strap
so that he can have the benefit of its services, stand at the
burro's left flank with the left hand on his hip and with
arm straight. A burro can kick front and back but not far
to the side. This position is safe until he changes his stance,
and the arm gives quick notice of such a tactic. If the ani-
mal should object, give up the project. He may be able
to free his tail himself and if not he will repent the first
time a horse fly comes along.

Packing

The load a burro can carry and the characteristics of
kyacks were discussed in chapter 12. It is essential that
the load be balanced for both weight and bulk. The kyacks
should be within three pounds of each other. The off-side
packer lifts his kyack first, because it is more convenient

PACKING 129

to remove this kyack last when unpacking the animal with-
out assistance. The near-side packer loops the ears of this
kyack over the cross-trees of the saddle and then lifts his
kyack. The ears are placed and both kyacks are eased down
at once so that the saddle will not be pulled to one side.
Canvas kyacks are loaded so that the member of the pair
provided with the strap is on the off side. This strap is
secured to the buckle of the near-side kyack. Stand behind
to see that the load is balanced at this stage. If the saddle
has been pulled to one side, recheck the weights of the
kyacks. If the saddle is straight but one kyack is lower
than the other, correct the lengths of the ear loops. If the
loops are not adjustable, rematch all kyacks to obtain
more suitable pairs.

Now comes the top load. Miscellaneous, odd-shaped
items are not in order. Compact bedding rolls or dun-
nage bags are fine. See page 112 regarding dimensions. A
single bedding roll goes crosswise between the cross-trees
of the saddle. If two rolls are used, they go lengthwise, one
resting on top of each kyack. Check the balance of the
load again and then spread the pack cover over the top.
Tuck the corners in so that they will not flap. If the cross
trees can be left exposed, it will be easier for you to see
the position of the saddle during the morning.

At first it is easiest for two campers to work together in
throwing the pack hitch, but after gaining experience one
may prefer to do it alone. The hitches diagrammed can
all be tightened as they are thrown and should be made
just as tight as possible. The tension is all on the pack and
does not bother the animal. One good pack hitch will serve
the needs of most campers but there is satisfaction in
knowing several. It is suggested that the beginner learn
the three hitches diagrammed here in the order given : The
squaw hitch is a very good general purpose hitch, which

130 BURRO MANAGEMENT

is easily learned and rapidly thrown and untied. It uses
a minimum of rope. It is best suited to compact or high
loads. The one-man diamond hitch is the favorite of most
experienced packers. It is more difficult to learn but makes
a very tight and neat pack; with practice it is quickly
thrown and untied. The box hitch uses only a little more
rope. It is best suited to broad flat loads. Fishing rod cases,
camera tripod and the ax go on last. They are stuck under
the pack ropes at the top of the pack.

Now that the hitch has been thrown, stand back and
gaze on your handiwork. It probably looks like a cumulus
cloud or an erupting volcano they usually do at first
but do not repack it if the saddle is still straight. There
is a reasonable chance that it will stay on until noon and
you will do much better after lunch.

On the trail

It is advisable to lead each burro during the first and
last days and whenever the trail is rough. It is essential
that enough campers walk with the pack train to give
each animal prompt attention if the trail becomes muddy,
or a pack slips, or the party must pass a column of mules.
Indeed, the sudden whim of a single animal may necessi-
tate the supervision of all. The animals may be allowed
to run free when circumstances permit, but they should
be kept together. The lead rope is then secured to the top
of the pack. It should be loose enough so the animal can
just reach water to drink. If there is more slack, he will
step over the rope and become entangled.

Burros set a pace which is very good for family groups
but which may seem slow to some people. As long as the
pack train keeps moving, there is little to do about it but
accept gracefully the fact that a burro cannot be made to
hurry. Trail burners who have thought of some reason

ON THE TRAIL 131

for hurrying past the scenes they came to enjoy should
not walk with burros. However, at times the pack train
may slow down to a pace which is unreasonable even for
donkeys. One man should then walk behind each burro
particularly if they are being led. A burro can pull
against the tug of a lead rope and can watch the man who
holds it. He is apprehensive about a man behind him who
offers no weight he can resist. This apprehension is in-
creased if the pesky man carries a willow switch even
though he never uses it. Psychology may be used further
upon an animal that is slower than the rest. At the head
of the pack train, he will retard the entire party unless the
burro behind him is impatient and butts him constantly.
At the tail of the pack train, he will show his gregarious
nature by hurrying to keep up. It is a mistake to shout at
the animals or threaten them constantly. This makes them
distrustful and skittish.

Try to keep the pack train moving. If a short halt is
necessary, hold the animals so that they will not bunch
and mill around, or start to graze or wander off. It is very
uncomfortable to support a pack when standing still as
any backpacker knows and burros may become tired
and lie down with their loads. This often necessitates re-
packing. On the other hand the burros may be allowed to
stop for short blows on the switchbacks leading up to a
pass. Grazing along the trail should be permitted only for
such animals as have learned to snatch a bite here and
there without stopping. The animals must not be permitted
to run. It takes a good pack job to hold together under this
treatment, besides the pots and cups make an alarming
racket and sugar will not taste good if mixed with salt.

Every member of the party must be on the lookout for
shifting loads. This should become second nature. Is the
cinch too tight? or too loose? or too far forward? Has

132 BURRO MANAGEMENT

the saddle slipped back? or to one side? Has the blanket
crept out from under the saddle? The rest of the load is
less important so long as it hangs together. Particular
vigilance is required on downhill stretches. If a load slips,
it should be repacked at the first suitable place in the trail
or sores will result. It may be best to stop the entire pack
train. In any event, one animal should not be taken from
a train alone; he will be too restless to stand quietly.

Horses and mules should not drink if overheated from
hard work, but burros may nearly always be allowed to
drink as often and as much as they want.

Fording streams.

In general, burros can ford any stream a man can cross
without swimming. If there is a current, the water must
not be deep enough to strike the animal's belly. The dif-
ficulty of the ford increases with the roughness of the
river bed, although animals prefer large cobbles to soft
sand or mud. Some burros will enter a swift stream with-
out even pausing at the bank, and others require consider-
able persuasion. Psychology may help considerably. If the
willing animals and most of the personnel cross first, and
go a short distance up the trail, the remaining donks wil]
at least see that they cannot persuade the party to turn
back. A gentle entry should be sought, which is not muddy
and where the water is quiet enough so that the bottom
can be seen. Now if several campers stand behind to cut
off retreat, a few good whacks with a stick on the burro's
dry-land end will usually send him on his way. If the first
try is not successful, the fifth may bring results, therefore
one should not give up. However, if there is sufficient man-
power in the party, time can be saved by pushing and drag-
ging the animal into the water. Once his feet are wet he
w;Jl keep going. If the stream is swift and the load heavy,

THE NOON HALT 133

the smaller animals should be escorted across. One of us
once watched a burro capsize in mid-stream and slowly
submerge a kyack containing a large sack of sugar. The
poor animal could not get up and the pack bubbled mer-
rily as we waded to the rescue. A lot of potential hotcake
syrup could have been saved had the animal been guided
through the water. To do so, one packer should wade on
each side of the burro, steadying the kyacks. The animal
should be allowed to take his time and will usually do
best if he picks his own route. But not always.

The noon halt

As explained in chapter 12, burro trippers usually
provide themselves with lunch materials before packing
in the morning so that the pack loads do not need to be
disturbed at mid-day. It does not follow that the burros
do not need to be unpacked. They have been doing all
the work and will appreciate the rest. They should be tied
in the shade, far enough apart so that each has a separate
sphere of influence. Lead ropes are again tied high and
fairly short. The pack rope is removed and kyacks and
dunnage placed on the ground out of the animals' reach.
The pack cover may be spread to protect the load from
sun and dust. The cinches should be loosened but not re-
leased, because saddles can be left on the animals to speed
repacking after lunch, unless it seems advisable to check
for sore backs. Saddle blankets should be lifted under the
cross-trees of the saddle again as in the morning so ani-
mals' backs will cool better.

Mud, snow, and rocks

Mud can be very troublesome. Burros have good rea-
son for their fear of swampy places. Small hoofs do not
give much support when under a load. In spite of all

134 BURRO MANAGEMENT

efforts to keep away from bogs, an animal may become
mired now and then. His struggles cause him to sink deeper
and all legs may go out of sight as he rests on his side or
belly. He will be trembling with fear and out of breath.
Move slowly and talk to him to quiet him. Remove the
pack, cutting ropes if necessary, and loosen the cinch. If
he is still unable to get up, assist him by pulling on saddle
and tail, but be careful of flying hoofs because he will
pop out like a cork when he comes. He should not be re-
packed until he has recovered his composure.

Burros dislike snow but can cross safely if the snow is
not too soft and if a trail is prepared for them. The shovel
should be used to dig a path which is as level as possible.
Broad steps will help prevent slipping on steep places.
Particular care should be taken to fill holes. Stamping
with boots and tamping with poles will make the trail
solid. The animals should be taken over the bad places
one at a time and should always be attended. It is often
possible to improvise trails around small snow patches
to which the animals have objection. Schedules should be
arranged so that passes are crossed early in the day be-
fore snow fields have softened in the sun.

Burros are very sure footed. They dance their hoofs
from rock to rock with surprising skill and may be trusted
to cross any stretch of rough trail which they undertake
willingly. If the going is unusually bad, they may need
encouragement. Assistance over an obstacle may be given
by lifting on the pack, but campers must be careful to
avoid being crushed between kyacks and unyielding gran-
ite boulders. Where slides or washes have obliterated the
trail and detours cannot be found, the animals should be
unpacked and their loads hand-carried across.

In the unhappy event that an animal breaks a leg, it
should be killed. In the absence of firearms, this is done

STUBBORNNESS 135

by striking several hard blows on its temple with an ax.
The body should be carried off the trail and buried.

Stubbornness

The notorious stubbornness of a donkey usually reflects
an unhappy past. We have never known of a strong healthy
burro whose stubbornness could not be overcome in a
week by good handling, and one day is often enough.
First of all, the animal should not be blamed for physical
handicaps or for the faults of his packer. If he is "stub-
born" while climbing a pass, his rear cinch may be too
tight; if he is "stubborn" descending the other side, he
may have stiff shoulders ; if he is "stubborn" on the level,
he may be overloaded. In our experience most so-called
stubbornness is confined to the smaller and weaker burros
and may be attributed to fatigue and old age. When such
animals cannot be refused at the packer's corral, they
should be favored with light loads.

Stubbornness may be the result of fear. This is over-
come by not requiring the animal to do anything he can-
not do with reasonable safety. Refusal to cross a river at
a bad ford shows good judgment, not bad temperament.
It is well to remember that few campers can be as familiar
with the trail as are the animals they pack.

Stubbornness may also be an attempt on the part of the
burro to see what he can get away with. If he learns
quickly that he cannot get away with anything unreason-
able, he becomes his packer's friend. When confronted
with an obdurate animal, give him the benefit of the
doubt. See that his pack is in good adjustment and that he
is not lame. Be sure that he knows what is expected of
him and try arbitration once more. No results. Now do
not give him the pleasure of watching you slowly lose
your temper as you barrage his long ears with invectives

136 BURRO MANAGEMENT

and his tough hide with sticks. Do not use a lip twitch or
other instrument of torture. Order him to do your bidding
in the tones a battalion commander must use to drill his
men, and simultaneously deliver several solid whacks.

This scene should not be long continued, however, and
if results are not soon forthcoming, other methods are re-
quired. The combined strength of several men is enough
literally to drag a burro for a short distance. Two women
were forced to change the entire itinerary of their pro-
jected summer outing because their one burro refused to
cross a certain bridge the first day. When we brought the
same burro to the same bridge later in the summer, we
could appreciate the girls' plight- this was a fine large
strong burro. He spread his legs in the trail and felt and
looked quite invincible. However, we got a short, heavy
pole and placed it under his rump. With two men on each
side we lifted the animal's rear end off the ground and
pushed gently forward. Like a wheelbarrow, he started
over the bridge on two legs. That burro was brought to
that same bridge four more times that season and he did
not so much as break a stride. He just looked up at us from
under a hairy ear and winked.

Unpacking

When the pack train files into the new campsite in the
afternoon, the layout oi the camp should be determined
quickly so that the animals can be kept out of the kitchen
and living room and so that the kyacks can be placed
in the pantry as they come off the saddles. There is no
trick to unpacking; the job can be done very quickly. The
important thing is to dispose of all equipment properly.
Pack ropes are coiled and placed together at the base of
a tree which is to serve as tool shed. The ax and shovel
go here. Pack covers are folded and stacked. The kyacks

UNPACKING 137

are lined up together where they will he convenient to the
cook, but they ought to remain in pairs because they are
matched for corresponding length of ear loops and because
some will not be unpacked very much and balance can
be maintained for morning packing. Saddles are lined up
along a log, if one is available, or on the ground. They
may be of different sizes and have been selected to fit cer-
tain burros; therefore the names or numbers of the ani-
mals should be marked on them to facilitate correct
matching in the morning. Each blanket is spread over its
respective saddle, animal side out, to dry. If it is threaten-
ing rain, the saddles may be stacked and the pile pro-
tected with a pack cover. The best way to lose lead ropes
is to leave them where the burros were tied before the
animals were disposed of for the night. The ropes are
collected and are hung over a low limb of the tool shed.

At night

Burros are seldom trained to use hobbles and would be
severely cut if hobbled when not accustomed to it. They are
picketed or simply turned loose. Picketing is less satis-
factory for the burro, is harder on the meadows, and is
more trouble at night. Turning the animals free is more
trouble in the morning. A single burro is more prone to
wander than a social group. Picketing may be desirable
the first and last nights to keep within bounds any incipient
homesickness for the easy life of the corral. It may save a
long search in the morning if the terrain is rather flat so
that the animals can wander in any direction. This is par-
ticularly true when feed near camp is not of the best. Ani-
mals should also be picketed if it is known that there is
poison feed in the area. In the West there is a plant known
as Death Camas (Zygadenus venenosus) which is quickly
fatal. It is a member of the lily family, with an inconspicu-

138 BURRO MANAGEMENT

ous whitish flower which grows to a height of about two
feet in wet shady meadows. Fortunately burros are in no
danger if there is enough bunchgrass for them elsewhere.

Burros must never be tethered unless a suitable area can
be found where feed is adequate and the ground is free
of rocks or other rope entanglers. Damage to vegetation is
great if shoots are young and tender or if the ground is
wet.

Since burros stay together, it is sufficient to picket only
half of them. If it has been noticed that certain of the
string are considered the life of the party by their asso-
ciates, these are the animals to tie up. From an equine
point of view, it is often the jennies which are so regarded.
At least one of the picketed animals should have a bell, if
available; the familiar sound attracts the others. Offer
water if a stream was not crossed late in the day.

Drive a good stake it will be called upon to take con-
siderable strain and a little piece of rotten wood will not
hold. Saplings which are strong enough seldom stand
alone and trimming would be required anyway, so it is
usually best to cut a stake. A few packers provide light
picket chains but the pack rope usually has to serve as
tether rope. Tie it to the stake at ground level with a clove
hitch; other knots could be pulled off the top of the stake.
To be sure that the burro will not wind the knot to the
end of the rope and thus be released, it is desirable to tie
two half hitches around the running rope (the long end)
with the standing rope (the short end). This is always
a good way to finish off a clove hitch. The pack rope of
an animal which is not to be tied up can be added to the
first rope to increase the grazing radius provided that the
larger area will be free of ground obstacles. The ropes are
joined with a sheet bend. If a square knot were used, it
could not be untied in the morning after dew and donkey

AT NIGHT 139

had conspired to make it tight. The tether rope is now
tied to the halter ring with a bowline, or a lead rope is
added if it has a snap and swivel. A swivel is very desirable.
Burros often walk up and down during the night to keep
warm and may completely unwind a twisted rope if no
swivel is provided. On unusually cold nights, a blanket
held in place by a loosely cinched saddle will help keep a
tethered animal warm. It is advisable to check before turn-
ing in for the night to see that ropes are free and all is
well. On layover days the position of the stakes must be
changed as often as needed to assure adequate feed, and
water is offered morning and afternoon.

When animals are turned loose for the night, the bells
go on the more influential animals. Bell straps are tied
tight enough so that they remain under the chin, where
they constrict the windpipe less than lower on the neck.
The animals might step through loose halters while graz-
ing; therefore they are removed unless they fit snugly. In
canyons, pack stock is invariably turned upstream. The
animals usually prefer this direction, knowing that feed
tends to be better in the more open upper reaches of a
mountain watershed. The camper prefers it because the
walls of the canyon and the pass beyond form a natural
corral within which to seek his stock in the morning. They
often leave the flat canyon floor but will not cross the pass
unless it is to follow a passing pack train. Burros are rarely
guilty of this misdemeanor, but the same cannot be said
for single horses and mules.

The National Park Service and Forest Service have
constructed drift fences across many canyons. Burro packer
and backpacker alike must cooperate in keeping drift fence
gates closed. One's faith in his fellow man takes a severe
jolt after tracking his stock to a drift fence gate left open
by a careless camper.

140 BURRO MANAGEMENT

Horses and mules

Success with a burro is a desirable prerequisite for
handling stronger and faster stock.

Good pack horses and mules can carry a pay load of 200
pounds when expertly packed. One hundred and seventy-
five pounds should be considered a maximum load on
one's first trip. The pack train can be counted on for 15
miles a day on good trails if it keeps pushing. These ani-
mals walk at a good clip and, unless their handlers are
fast hikers, all personnel should be mounted. This becomes
more important as the size of the party increases. Mules
are led singly by pedestrians or are tied in groups of not
more than five animals and are then led by a man on horse-
back. This is the "string" of the professional packer. Each
lead rope passes through the left hand breech ring of the
preceding animal's harness and is then tied around that
animal's neck with a bowline. This arrangement keeps the
string in control without straining the packs but is risky in
rough terrain where one shying mule may roll an entire
string.

One or more horses are nearly always sent out with pack
mules. The mules, which would otherwise wander far
and sometimes independently, are attracted to their ani-
mal chaperones and need not be tied up at night. Horses
can only be tethered where feed is particularly good and
are usually belled and hobbled. It is well not to under-
estimate the distance a hobbled horse can cover in the
night if poor feed and lack of company make travel at-
tractive. Grain is often carried to make capture easier.
To facilitate packing, tie the animals to a picket line a
packrope strung shoulder-high between trees. Tie lead
ropes with a magnus hitch and they won't slip along the
line.

MEADOW WELFARE 141

No respectable packer would give a novice a mean or
ornery mule to take on a private trip. The greater danger
is that an old or ailing animal will be offered. Experienced
trail animals are not likely to kick or bite if not provoked;
however, the kick of a mule can break a leg. Mules need
firmer handling than burros. The best of them give more
dependable service.

Burros usually go barefoot, but horses and mules are
shod, a slight disadvantage on smooth rock. This is a draw-
back to the private packer, because shoes may be thrown
on an extended trip and prompt reshoeing is desirable,
and sometimes necessary before the hoofs go lame or be-
come so worn that a new shoe cannot be fitted. Extra shoes
for front and rear should be carried on a trip of more
than a week's duration because one often chances to pass
professional packers who are otherwise equipped to re-
place a worn shoe.

The longer legs and greater strength of horses and mules
make water, snow, and mud less formidable obstacles.
Greater ability is coupled with greater willingness. Larger
hoofs in proportion to weight give horses an advantage
and they should precede over snowfields and bogs.

Whether you use the mule or either of his parents, we
urge that you duly consider the welfare of meadows, the
limiting factor in mountain usage for those traveling with
stock. Fewer flowers nod to lazy breezes in overgrazed
meadows; grass does not seed itself adequately and the
luxuriance of a natural garden has been impaired for
the next season; further trampling of grassy slopes leads
to erosion and the permanent loss to generations of moun-
tain lovers of pasture which might have supported the
stock which could have carried their sleeping bags, cam-
eras, and fishing rods to vacation spots now denied them
because campers who went before them did not look ahead.

14. Wilderness Prospect

THERE you HAVE IT the story of what you can
do along the sky-land trails of the wilderness. We should
like to think there is enough scope and persuasion in what
has been said here to speed you on your way to the nearest
roadhead, there to pocket your car key for a few weeks
and see what lies beyond. If there isn't enough scope and
persuasion, we'd appreciate knowing for future editions.

Our indirect purpose in this book, as we said, is to
encourage you to learn enough about the wilderness to feel
a real stake in preserving it, not only for today's travelers,
but also for the unnumbered who are entitled to explore
and enjoy wild lands as pleasant as ours. There ought
always to be a wide, beautiful, natural world in places.
There always will be so long as man handles his scenic
treasures with care and guards them against the threat
that stems from his own prodigality.

May there be many to stand watch among those who
learn the pleasures of going light!

[142]

APPENDIX

Appendix: Food Lists

WE GIVE HERE two varieties of food lists the
first rather general, to provide an approximate guide to
items in various categories, with a fairly liberal range
of amounts; the second quite specific, listing the exact
amounts of each item used in a 100-man-day, two-week
trip by a mixed group. The lists differ greatly.

The second list provides no margin for extended peri-
ods of cold weather or for an unusual number of lay-
over days; either of these factors would increase the food
required, as would an emergency which prevented a party's
getting out of the mountains on schedule or an acci-
dental loss of food owing to weather, gravity, wildlife,
or cooking tragedy.

It is the general experience that the real mountain ap-
petite does not build up until about the tenth day of a
trip, after which the amount of food consumed is prodi-
gious. Age is of course an important factor; a group of
growing boys can upset an otherwise well-planned food
list. If the party is young, traveling far and high in cool
places, and out for a month or more, the per -man-day
figure should probably be two and a half pounds.

1. General food requirements (in pounds per man-day)
Starches (precook where possible) , 0.45-0.60

Dry cereal (if the bulk is deemed worth while) ; oatmeal; cream
of wheat or wheat flakes; yellow corn meal; concentrated dried
soups; soy, pea, or bean flour (for soups) ; spaghetti, noodles,
or macaroni; dried potatoes (preferably precooked, so-called
[144]

GENERAL FOOD LIST 145

"Instant"); rice (preferably instant; brown if cooking time
permits) ; rye crackers, hardtack, hard crackers, etc.; pancake
flour, or white flour and baking powder; dried peas, lentils, beans
(precooked).

Sugars, 0.35-0.45

White sugar (use liberally) ; brown or raw sugar (makes better
syrup) ; candies (hard candies digested sooner than chocolate).

Nuts (shelled and salted), 0.10-0.15
Walnuts, almonds, peanuts, cashews, brazils, etc.

Dried fruits and vegetables, 0.30-0.45

Apples, apricots, peaches, pears, figs, raisins, dates (don't take
sticky kinds) prunes, carrots, beets, tomatoes (dried or canned
paste), onions, etc. Tomatoes and onions valuable for flavoring.

Fats and fatty foods, 0.10-0.15

Butter or margarine (put in nearly everything; soups, mush, noo-
dles, vegetables, etc.) ; bacon (put fat in mush, soup, etc.) ;
peanut butter.

Protein, 0.40-0.60

Canadian bacon, dried beef, ham, spam, etc. ; salami, corned beef
(this is heavy), liverwurst; whole milk powder (use in nearly
everything) ; mild cheese; powdered whole egg.

Beverage materials, to suit

Coffee, tea, cocoa, bouillon cubes, jello (for hot drinks), orange
or lemon powder.

Flavoring materials, to suit

Salt (use generously) , pepper, onion salt, celery salt, cinnamon,
maple flavor, chili powder plus any others in your repertoire.

Total food per man-day, 2.00-2.50.

A few pointers until you ascertain your own preferences:

1. You will probably want to eat your starches roughly as follows:
30 per cent at breakfast, 30 at lunch, and 40 at dinner.

2. Your protein should probably include 0.12 to 0.17 pounds
per man-day of milk powder, and 0.05 to 0.15 pounds of cheese.

3. Take at least 0.015 pounds per man-day of salt, and don't spill
it or drop it in the creek.

146

APPENDIX

List for 100 man-days (in pounds per item for period)

Beverage

Hemo 5.0

Tea (96 bags) .6

Instant coffee 1.0
Breads

Wheat thins, trisket 1.8

Pumpernickel, Swiss rye 5.0

Fig, apricot newtons 4.7
Candy

Caramels (wrapped) 4.1

Chocolate 6.2

Hard (wrapped) 7.7
Cereal

Cornmeal, wheatmeal 3.5

Oatmeal, quick 3.5

Pancake flour 3.0
Cheese

Cheddar, Jack, Swiss 10.3
Condiments

Salt 0.6

Onion flakes 0.6

Tomato flakes 0.6

Lemons (2) 0.3

Chili, garlic powders,

cinnamon O.I
Desserts

Jello 1.1

Instant butterscotch,
tapioca, and vanilla

puddings 5.1
Dried fruit

Apple nuggets 1.7

Banana flakes 0.6

Apricots, peaches 10.5

Dates (pitted) , figs,

raisins 8.0

Prunes 6.5

Dried milk 8.7

Butter or oleo 3.5

Nuts peanuts and mixed 8.2
Protein

Bacon (Canadian) 3.5

Corned beef 5.0

Dried Beef 1.0

Dried egg 1.2

Ham (canned), spam 5.0
Salami, Italian 3.5

Tuna, canned chicken 5.0
Soups, dried

Bouillon cubes 0.8

Split pea, onion,

chicken 2.8

Starch

Macaroni 1.2

Noodles 2.6

Potatoes, powdered 2.4

Rice 1.1

Spaghetti 2.4

Sugar

Brown 3.5

White 7.0

Miscellaneous items
Vitamin C, 50 mg. tab-
lets (200)
Soap (0.5 bar)
Toilet paper (5 rolls)
Matches (large box)
SOS pads (1 box),
scouring cloths 1.0

Total 16L5

SPECIFIC FOOD LIST 147

Comments

This list provides a fair variety within skeleton menus
for each meal: Breakfast stewed fruit, cooked cereal,
bacon, Hemo, and occasionally pancakes or scrambled
eggs. Lunch cheese, dried fruits, nuts, chocolate or
caramels, salami, whole-grain breadstuff. Dinner soup,
a gow dish, dessert, and tea. The composition of gow de-
pends on the bravery and ingenuity of the cook.

The larger the group, the greater the ease of variation
and the less important the consideration of individual
dislikes, for someone else is bound to compensate for that
peculiarity. (However, one shouldn't let his eating edu-
cation stop at the three-year level!)

The average daily intake from the suggested food list
compares adequately, for moderately active men and
women, with the recommended daily allowances (1948
revision) set up by the Food and Nutrition Board of the
National Research Council, except for vitamin C. Lemon
and orange concentrates supply significant quantities of
this vitamin.

A few of the items listed are particularly valuable in
this diet in the amounts allotted. They are : dried apricots
and peaches, milk, ham, corned beef, cheese, nuts and
Hemo, a chocolate drink fortified with vitamins and min-
erals. In fact, if cocoa were substituted for the latter,
there would be a definite sub optimum level of the thia-
mine (vitamin B x ) and riboflavin (vitamin B 2 ) needed
for energy conversion, and a considerable lowering of the
vitamin A intake.

Appendix: Equipment List

THIS LIST is well worth checking through before
each trip ; it eliminates that what-have-I-f orgotten feeling
as you drive toward the trails. Weights are in ounces. You
may be able to beat some of them. It pays to try in added
comfort on the trail if not in camp !

To wear

Advisable: Underwear, shirt, socks, trousers, belt, shoes, ban-
danna, dark glasses, optical glasses (if used), matches, pocket
knife.

Optional: Hat or cap, knapsack, watch, lip ointment, notebook
and pencil, handkerchief, hunting knife.

To carry

Advisable: Rucksack (56), emergency kit (18), adhesive tape
(4), sunburn protection (1), parka (23), sweater (10), bandanna
(1), sleeping bag (80), flashlight with new cells (2), wallet and
keys (4), cup (3), map (1), toothbrush, soap, and comb in water-
proof bag (5), extra clothing: underwear (5), shirt (7), socks (8).

Optional: Air mattress (16), extra glasses and case (3), crash
towel (5), mosquito repellent (4) , emergency food (12), tent stakes
(2), hiking shorts and shirt (16), gloves or mitts (4), shaving kit
(6), cigarettes (?), bathing suit.

Community equipment for three or four

Advisable: Waterproof sheet (28), repair kit (18), headlight
(22), two nesting pots (16), five spoons (4), extra dark glasses and
case (3), toilet tissue, matches, sewing kit (5), food and containers
(per man-day) (27-40), campfire permit, compass.

Optional: Tapered tent (64), hand ax and sheath (29), emer-
gency food (32), extra laces (1), can opener (1), light shoes (32),
ace bandage (2) , shoe wax (6) , extra flashlight cells and lamp (10) ,
milk whip (4), playing cards (5), canteen (full) (40), aneroid
[148]

EQUIPMENT LIST 149

barometer (3), thermometer (3), first-aid extras (16), shovel (32),
foot powder (5) , photographic equipment, literature, fishing tackle,
musical instruments, and botanical, zoological, or geological equip-
ment (weights unpredictableproceed with care, for the best-inten-
tioned plans for going light can run amuck in these categories;
consider the cultural values, of course, but ask yourself, "Can we
leave it out?" and try hard to say Yes).

Equipment for rock and ice

The equipment that may be required by those aspiring to more
than easy cross-country routes is not nearly so complicated as is the
technique required for safe use of the equipment. This book does
not cover either subject. See Manual of Ski Mountaineering.

First-aid packets

Following are suggestions for packets to be carried on
mountain trips.

BACKPACKERS (EACH PERSON)

1^" x 5 yd. adhesive tape 6 capsules codeine sulfate 1

1" roll gauze bandage grain with aspirin 5 grains

6 3" steripads 6 aspirin tablets 5 grains

% oz. tincture of merthiolate 10 penicillin V tablets, 250 mil-

(or substitute 3% per cent ligrams each

tincture of iodine) assorted band-aids

ANIMAL PACKERS (FOR PARTY OF 4)

3" x 5 yds. adhesive tape 50 aspirin tablets
3 1", 3 2", 3 3" gauze band- 6 codeine-aspirin

ages 15 penicillin V tablets, 250 mil-
12 3" steripads ligrams each

1 oz. tincture of merthiolate 2 oz. Kip

1 large box band-aids 2 oz. zinc oxide ointment

NOTE. The best compilation of sources of equipment is the current
"Equipment Bulletin" published by the Potomac Appalachian
Trail dub, Washington, D.C,, supplemented by equipment news
items in Appalachian Trailway News, published by the Appalachian
Trail Conference, 1916 Sunderland Place, N.W., Washington 6,
D.C.

Bibliography

BOOKS

American National Red Cross, American Red Cross First Aid
Text-Book (rev. ed.), Philadelphia.

ATWOOD, WALLACE W., The Rocky Mountains, New York, 1945.

BREWER, WILLIAM H., Up and Down California in 1860-1864
(edited by Francis P. Farquhar), Berkeley and Los Angeles,
1949.

BROWER, DAVID (ed.), Manual of Ski Mountaineering (Rev. ed.),
San Francisco, 1962.

BUTCHER, DEVEREUX, Exploring Our National Parks and Monu-
ments, New York.

CARHART, ARTHUR H., The Outdoor sman's Cookbook, New York,
1944.

Department of the Army, Mountain Operations (FM 70-10), pre-
pared under the direction of the Chief of Staff, Washington.
D.C., 1960.

EDWARDS, J. GORDON, A Climber's Guide to Glacier National Park,
San Francisco, 1960.

FARQUHAR, FRANCIS P., "The Literature of Mountaineering,**
Appalachia, Boston, 1939, 1940.

HARRISON, A. E., Exploring Glaciers with a Camera, San Fran-
cisco, 1960.

HAZARD, JOSEPH T., Pacific Crest Trails from Alaska to Cape Horn,
Seattle, 1946.

HENDERSON, KENNETH A., Handbook of American Mountaineering,
Boston, 1941.

HILDEBRAND, JOEL H. AND LOUISE, Camp Catering (2d ed.), New
York (Stephen Daye Press), 1941.

[150]

BIBLIOGRAPHY 151

KEPHART, HORACE, Camping and Woodcraft, New York, 1939.
KING, CLARENCE, Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada (edited

and with a preface by Francis P. Farquhar) , New York, 1946.
LsCoNTE, JOSEPH, A Journal of Ramblings through the High

Sierra of California [in 1875], San Francisco, 1960.

LEOPOLD, ALDO, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and
There, New York, 1952.

MCDERMAND, CHARLES, Waters of the Golden Trout Country, New
York, 1946.

, Yosemite and Kings Canyon Trout, New York, 1947.

MANNING, HARVEY (ed.), Mountaineering; The Freedom of the
Hills, The Mountaineers, Seattle, 1960.

Mum, JOHN, My First Summer in the Sierra, Boston and New
York, 1911.

MUSHAM, H. A., The Technique of the Terrain, New York, 1944.

ORTENBURGER, LEIGH, A Climber's Guide to the Teton Range, San
Francisco, 1956.

PEATTIE, RODERICK (ed.), The Cascades: Mountains of the Pa-
cific Northwest, New York, 1949.

(ed,), The Inverted Mountains: Canyons of the West,

New York, 1948.

(ed.), The Pacific Coast Ranges, New York, 1946.

(ed.), The Sierra Nevada: The Range of Light, New York.

1947.
SAMIVEL, Sous Vodl des choucas, ou les plaisirs d'alpinisme, Paris,

1932 [does not require a knowledge of French].
STARR, WALTER A., Jr., Guide to the John Muir Trail and the High

Sierra Region, San Francisco.

VOGE, HERVEY H. (ed.), A Climber's Guide to the High Sierra

(2d ptg.), San Francisco, 1956.
WEAVER, ROBERT W. AND ANTHONY F. MERRILL, Camping Can Be

Fun, New York, 1948.
YOUNG, GEOFFREY W. (ed.), Mountain Craft, London, 1947.

JOURNALS

American Alpine Club, New York, The American Alpine Journal.
Appalachian Mountain Club, Boston, Appalachia (semiannual).
Colorado Mountain Club, Denver, Trail and Timberline (monthly).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

152

Mazamas, Portland, Oregon, Manama (monthly, December issue a
magazine number).

Mountaineers, Seattle, The Mountain (monthly, December issue
a magazine number) .

Potomac Appalachian Trail Club, Washington, B.C., Bulletin Po-
tomac Appalachian Trail Club (quarterly).

Sierra Club, San Francisco, Sierra Club Bulletin (monthly, an-
nual magazine number).

The authors:

The principal authors are a group of wilderness travelers
who learned a great deal about high mountains of the "West
and who have proved their knowledge in faraway fields. Dav/d
Brower was a plans and training officer in the U.S. Mountain
Training Group who served with the 1 Oth Mountain Division
in Italy. R.ichard M. Leonard and Bestor Robinson worked on
the design of mountaineering equipment for the Office of
the Quartermaster General on three continents. The four
Hil de brands, Professor Joel, his sons Alex and Milton, and his
daughter Loviise Klein, seem always to have been in back
country, always with an emphasis on traveling light. H.
Stewart K/tnball, M.D., began his wilderness travel in the
early 'thirties and served with the Mountain Troops. Elizabeth
Cowles is, as you will see, the most perceptive of mountaineers.
She has had Himalayan experience.

Cross reference:

Readers seeking a comprehensive modern treatment of moun-
tain travel should refer to Mountaineering: The Freedom of
the Hills, edited by Harvey Manning for The Mountaineers
(distributed by the Sierra Club).

For further information about the Sierra Club, see over.

MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION

Sierra Club, Mills Tower, San Francisco 94104

Date

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